Trust Like the Color in the Special Collections Room

Ask yourself about the matchless blue of daytime sky
as if you were the first
cosmologist.

+++++I’ve felt at times that everything needs
a corrective breath
++++++++++just so all of us

can understand again.

At the end of an event
+++++one starlit night, a rare voice night,
+++++++++++++++the walls a Wedgwood blue—

the artist offered everyone
+++++a gift, a t-shirt stamped we’ve got to find a way
with a child’s potato prints.

I’d been noticing a power outlet
+++++on the baseboard, underneath shelves
professionally lit, where after hours I might sneak back

+++++to put my head to hardwood floor and plug right in,
a homecoming no one would know about but me—

(how much sense it made, how unending then)
+++++the always unencumbered light

bringing out the paint’s traditional shade, not made but
+++++given, like hydrangeas, bluets, jays, desperate

wolves blue around the edges, as the ailing artist looked
+++++when his friends had gone to medics
begging for drugs to keep him steady,

because although he could be monstrous
+++++his work was of the finest thread,

how the next time my son asks where do we come from?
+++++I might be taken by astonished shoulders
to give a transforming answer,

how sometimes we ignore the furrowed morning glories,
+++++drained blue in complete exalting.