Blue Blue Blue Blue Blue

Poem of the Day:
"Blue" by May Swenson
www.americanpoets.com


I have referenced the daily grind often. It is daily, and it is grinding. It is the sound of those hot, grinding subway cars as they slice the tracks, determined and single-minded. "Work, work, work," they screech; "sleep, sleep, sleep," I cry.

On my walk to work this morning, I took note of a phenomenon: the color blue. Business men love wearing blue shirts, crisp and tucked into khaki pants. They look like flocks of bluebirds, their caffeine-wings shuttering.

Swenson, as her title suggests, writes about the color blue. Her blue is intoxicating: "I sink in Blue-/black Rose-heart holes until you/blink" (lines 15-17). A sensuality marks the speaker's conception of the color, as Swenson writes, "I milknip your two Blue-skeined/blown Rose beauties, too, to sniff/their berries' blood, up stiff/pink tips" (lines 20-23). Swenson's blue has layers, romantic and sexual.

The flock of men I saw today, and whom I see everyday, were of a starched blue, ironed and impersonal. At the 9 AM call they disperse across the green of Copley Square -- a cerulean gaggle of memos.


Sincerely,
A Poem A Day Audrey