Late afternoon melts into sound,
into an old woman in a blue striped swimsuit

who stands on the sand still littered
with shells from Hurricane Sandy, her sunlit

cellulite dimpled like the clouds, her ripples
like the surface of the sea, constant

motion. I remember I heard once on the radio
that in some other country, there was no word

for blue. They called it grey, or worse,
called it nothing. Then,

did the varicose veins in her
thighs have nothing to do with the sky?

Then, did the pull of the tide fail to mirror 
the pulse of the blood towards breath? Today

in this blue country, where everyone says I  
don’t see blue, crowds are marching

because Michael Brown’s body was left to rot
on the hot, blue street, and the blood flooded  

out of Michael Brown’s mind into
other minds. Today I am alive, but I is less

than one word. Don’t you see these words are not
my witnesses. Blue is

how the deep mind sees us. We cannot
turn away from the country we create. 

Even now, at the edge of the continent,
this other woman is watching me dive

and re-surface and dive, as if she meant
to swim towards me, as if she needed

to ask why I am singing,
as if somewhere far off, 

in a new wave of creation,
she felt the blue aching of today.