I think

...that this isn't quite ready to share, so I'm sharing it. Perhaps another's brain will work better than mine today. I had some trouble with formatting--it took awhile to figure out the line break stuff and I think I've ended up with a different font.

The Blue Revolution

“blue recalls, if anything, the sea and the sky,
the most abstract elements of touchable
and visible nature” Yves Klein


1

Klein knew it was not just staged
squares of IKB so much as the white
      walls behind that sets the mind’s
      placement of scene, and how it is not
presence that orchestrates an endless heart,
one single note continually performed

but absence that eternally holds us in place
and time. Maybe the wind
     works the same, presses in to ample
     open spaces, yet hides some nights behind
horizon’s co-ordinated curtain, softly snags
us in frames half filled with prairie then sky.




2.

Tonight I stroll the farmyard lane —
frogs and tadpoles long crooning,
     coyotes echoed bass
     in a nearby field. The unwavering
sound deafens a nephew’s
grinding truck as he follows me

in the dirt, his easy growl
assuming the role of motor
    as he screeches to a halt beside me.
    We stop in windless dusk
toss rocks at willows woven in water,
listen to another creature whoop

more vocals from reedy roots.
The dog dives at the muddied surface
     shatters an evening choir cloaked by stems
     and suddenly I wish I could sink
up to my knees, catch and hold frogs
and toads and tadpoles, keep

a year’s past uncertainties in glass
mason jars, confine disappointment as creatures
    rescued from a stationary pond
    hours siphoned in to the clear
jar, each tiny second examined
under secured scrutiny then quietly set free.




3.

Wind’s cease-fire stages each scene.
My own performance, the year’s shawl
    wrapped lightly around my shoulders, corners
    loosened by rehearsals. In the wind’s absence
I measure and re-measure the fit—
each day’s rough fabric against white shoulders.

Without the wind—what are we? Smooth
aluminium siding sidled next to each other.
    Neighbours nudged by blind fingers.
    The wind moves us, draws us in
dark ink, pushes us forward. Without it
we are silent, uninhabited blue.