Blue
Once I thought there was no blue in nature
except the sky—I thought Nature couldn’t make
a blue fiower, or tree, or creature.
I was young and hadn’t looked at anything—
that was before I knew delphiniums
and morning glories, before I’d heard the blue jays,
or recognized the steadfast spruce trees,
or knew about Nabokov’s butterflies.
Before my blue cat, I didn’t know color
has its own vocabulary in every language:
his mother was a Russian Blue,
and often, when I’d been out a while,
the delirious syllables of his blueness
would amaze me at the door—
it’s always so hard to remember color exactly . . .
His coat couldn’t be described by any synonyms
or tropes for gray, not mist or fog,
not colorless, not ash—
although I’ve buried his ashes in the pitch-
dark shade of our yard where hot summer days
he loved to lie, happy
to be cool yet close to me,
and I’m going to plant a juniper nearby,
not really to remind me, but that every autumn
the place where he lay might be