The sky is startlingly blue today.

It's a pale blue, though
Not unlike the soft, blue translucence of the diaphanous blouse
Indelibly etched on my memory some twenty years ago
From a one-time, and one-time only, glance
In Basel, Switzerland.

It adorned a young, doe-like creature,
The ultimate of suppleness;
Lissome and graceful,
Sloe eyes, tilting slightly upwards,
Soft, alabaster skin, casting muted, otherworldly light
Amidst her tender, gentle movement;
An embodiment of all the world that's fey,
And, alas, never to be known—
Never to be seen again.

Yet that soft blue remains,
Remains, in the delicate tint within a breaking wave,
In the cool, pastel flutter of a discarded love letter,
In the accidental notice of the reflection of sky upon water,
In the tiny, luminescent crystals in the iris of a startled eye.

And as I sit, my back against this more than solid trunk of overhanging tree,
Alone,
In an open field of wavering, hesitant grass whispering hushed messages of silky quietude,
The grass still, then gently rippling, then still again,
And still... ... And still
I think of that pale blue, that soft, ineffable blueness
That makes me, myself,
Yearn,
To be the sky,
To blend with all the world
That's calm, and real, and true.

Evening appears:
The blue, now deep and rich,
The sky of Van Gogh's "Night Cafe,"
Approaching, but never black,
Never dark, never empty.

© 2003 ______Muldoon Elder