Blue Mirrors

1. WITHIN

Blue is the sound that laps, that slaps the piers

until they're as blue as the sky

they loft a roof against, a blue so deep, so clear

only the ribs of ice-crystal cirrus would float

over the forest of stone where air is equal parts

cold, candle wax, incense, and mold: blue the hour

when into the chapel straggle the boy sopranos,

blue the last tease drowned by the organ's swell.

Who will be transported this evensong?

The wooden angels are dusty.

No call for a saint to walk away from death

over stained-glass waves when he can row

to the galleon outlined in lead

hard by a milky iceberg anchored in wait

at the blue edge of the Old World.

In her window across the nave

a woman in red with a child on her hip

is turned away, what's left of her face

lost to all but the soldier nearby.

Swarmed by children, one on his back,

one riding his armored foot,

he has become hers, home from a forgotten war,

though his gray eyes search not her but us.

Out from the trees in blue-green leaf

his comrade has stepped, raising a blue-white blade

to get on with the slaughter of the youngest boys

as the king has ordered, the only red that's spilled

the shafts of light stained by the dress

the glazier gave her, light flashed with rubies

too rich for her rank spilling to the floor.

2. WITHOUT

Blue is the hour when into the orchard

of shadows drift the first deer,

blue the fruit they glean

in the long blue grass that blade by blade

bends under the weight of dew.

However you make yourself other than threat,

still, without lifting her head

from the shadows she grazes on,

the doe has stiffened into stone.

You will come no closer this blue hour.

With the slyness of the shy

she has eased her body between you

on the old beach road and the fawn,

edging it along its shadow into the forest

of shadows until they are lost.

All you hear is down the cliff

where wave upon oncoming wave

batters and then licks clean

the black, the blue shore that crumbles

under such solicitude.

Deep as midnight are the halves,

mismatched, of mussel shells washed up,

one left cradling for the night

a spoonful of salt in its mother-of-pearl,

one overturned in the blue sand,

small craft aground, awaiting the turn

of the tide to rock it adrift.