To say blue would be too simple (excerpt)

To select a favorite stone to set in silver is to know your knuckles

and the years of cobalt and opal you have held your hands

under cool water, inside this wintery place. The songs you know
by heart, melodies of movie musicals in which the angel father

brings a star of cyan from blue heaven for his daughter
The full, blue moon, your head bobbing to jazz drum shuffle

All this aquamarine and fall blue, late snow that lands
on the azure underside of desert earth where aspens molt

and the evergreen trees are nearly navy when squinting to see
driving in again for home, from far. Tired and blue

Blue where rickety houses hang on to the edge of the earth
Secure now as seen from a deep denim galaxy, you, working blue,

Mother, and I had to leave you to return to your enchanted place
To your worn, cool hands jeweled with blue. To dry waves of juniper,

jays, and the hues of landscape as runoff spills over, blue bottles...

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