blue octets

"You’re the only one I want
& I’ve never heard your name"
        Townes Van Zandt
 

#1

where have you gone, June? your alien flowers
cream white & blush on lawns I don’t remember—

brown sparrows dart into blackberry hedges
as I walk past & steel blue cars keep rolling—

under a sidewalk ash a young couple kiss:
a blue ink tattoo of the moon character—

lemon sun in a sky spackled gray & blue:
could I take someone aside & say your name


#2

half life of morning dreams when crows are cawing
on power lines above the drooping cedar—

evanescence: one of the possible words; 
the oatmeal’s blueberry honey aroma,

a playground with a swing under a maple,
the swimming pool's unnatural blue deep end—

just a kid once; the pastures’ electric fence
& a dry well & a moon in the day sky


#3

spring afternoon with sky-blue eyes & roses,
coral magenta vermilion pleats & folds—

I have nothing to give you except the flash
of the scrub jay in the rickety trellis—

another song, another guitar’s blue note
bent to a microtone that hasn’t a name

except cold June, mountain bluebird, blue wrist vein,
rags in a kitchen drawer, I could sing all these


#4

monday's cerulean 9:00 pm with half moon
tilted, gray cirrus clouds haunting west to east

past two planets; things are dropping inside me:
a waterfall running into a culvert—

#4 line bus groaning past spent magnolias;
your black & white photo just now beyond reach—

geese swerving past the white moon & glass buildings:
unsure messengers north through the blue vestige


Jack Hayes
© 2016