Letting go of the shame of not knowing blue,
letting go of the pain they tangled in hue.
Letting go of the thought that blue wasn’t true.
Letting go of the confusion of water and wine,
we see the vast ocean, before there was time.
Letting go of fixed mind,
unstable ghosts of past:
The father she chased in each lover,
and the unpredictable shadows of shame.
Seeing her reflection in the mirror mother,
she pleaded him to stay,
stitching faith from frayed threads.
Letting go of fixed mind,
its weight in the woven loom:
The mother he rescues in each lover,
his stubborn grasp at her inner gold.
Seeing his reflection in the mirror father,
he kneeled at her altar,
sacrificing the wrong spirit.
Honor the ones that fell from high,
their ceaseless gazes are returned in our quiet dawns.
At the kindergarten gate,
fears of maternal absence linger.
What sage would refuse to listen
to this crying child?
Remembering the main street store,
colorful plastic toys at my feet.
“Stay here,” she said, her voice a thread of trust.
She passed through a curtained door,
into the veiled world,
coloring me with uncertainty.
Honor the ones that fell from high,
unveil their eyes in our quiet dawns.
Wild tragedy unfolds, in earnest truth.
“All women become like their mothers.”
No man escapes the ghost of his father.
Frayed fabrics – not from weaving,
but hasty hands and slow deceiving.
Listen deeply dearest one,
work with gentle hands and paced understanding.
Recognize the true blue, not water and wine,
the limitless ocean, the refuge within you.
Post Script
This poem was written into an absence. Someone I loved had become unreachable, and I was still trying to speak across the silence. Beneath that effort was an intuition that old pain can continue shaping our lives long before we are able to recognize it, and that two people may become entangled not only with each other, but with the unfinished histories they carry.
“Not knowing blue” became an image for what is present before it has been clearly distinguished. Color is not divided and named in exactly the same way by every language or culture. Something may surround us, and even shape how we see, before we have been taught to recognize it as something of its own. Childhood fear and inherited suffering can remain similarly woven into experience before language allows them to be discerned.
The photograph of deep water gathers the poem’s sense of distance, submerged memory, and difficult listening. The ocean is both separation and refuge: the silence across which the poem calls, and a depth larger than either person can provide for the other. The call moves outward, but it also turns inward, toward learning to recognize true blue for oneself.
Image credit: Deep blue sea, Lars Lentz
Primitive Joe 
