Bluebird in Cutleaf Beech - Wendy Wilder Larsen

there is no pigment in blue feathers
all other colors are scattered out
blue is what's left

that particular shade of delphinium petals
falling on my mother's white lacquer table
under the rotunda in summer

the color of distance
the pain in my father's watery blues
in that picture in the navy

blue
the faded pinafore in my portrait
hands folded, same pale eyes

the color we love to contemplate
not because it comes to us
but because it draws us after it

the will-o'-the-wisp's bluish glow
that loses us at the crossroads
lures us into swamps

blue then
this absence
this scattering

still I would search
and call out

there

mother
father

bluebird