Susan Utting
POEMS
Today's Blue
Today’s blue’s nothing turquoise, it does not
shift in the light from duck-egg bright to aqua,
it is not a patch of sky to mend a sailor’s trousers
or the uniform of girls let out in crocodiles, on pre-set
routes through Mellor’s Park on Wednesday afternoons.
It's not indelible on children’s tongues, or carbon
smudged on sweaty palms and touch-type fingertips,
nor is it jazzy/sad mood indigo for something small
you’ll always miss but never really had; today’s blue
is a memory of worsted cloth, tacked long and loose,
worn inside out, marked white with broken lines
of tailor’s chalk. It is a man cross-legged on a table
in a backroom; it is not my father, though he’s there
and with me and would understand the weft and warp,
the mesh of yarn, tight-woven to a blue so dark
you'd call it black; that he’d call midnight.
from Houses Without Walls