Following Along

 

Following Along

on listening to James 

Schuyler read "The 

Bluet"

it's my mistake to make

"dour" read "doubt" especially when

the poet's gone from spring

into deep October

in just a couple

of lines

with his image

with his memory

of a bluet.  In between all this, I want 

to say Dickinson wrote about bluets.  I want to  

say when she was looking 

at autumn come on

sometimes slow

sometimes running so hot

she took to hiding

in the folds

of all the cool things

she could find outside of the kitchen, blue  

was the only thing that fooled

her.  She'd want maybe the absolute

devotion of blue

as a bluet

snugged up

against everything in her 

house who was

coming down with something

seizing or consumptive or 

like a first flush

of a grasped throat, a baby

of an illness, a baby

being made but far

off, far, far off

beyond October

beyond the rest of the dour months

(because dour is slow as doubt

is slow)

that want something blue

but won't ask for it, will settle for it having

been forced to rise

up from the bone and out,

keeping time with 'dour'

or keeping time with 'doubt'

you choose.