If for once, I could write without blue—
no robin’s egg dressed in washed morning,
no linens set out to dry on the line. Could write
without December, which is the bluest month,
and without night’s muse spooning me
into wispy thread, needling star into star
into morning’s sleepless breath. If I see a mirror
in this poem, the mirror, like everything,
turns into blue mother. My mother, in her dress
scolding. Write something else, she says, and I do
write about her mouth that bent once
over my forehead, her fine fingers around my
wrist showing the size of my bones. But
not here. Here, the egret stands in the flattened
swamp—which is all green and brown
against the migrating white wingspan.
The feathers scattering won’t be here long.
A few months left until the snow.
