Blue

My husband gave me paperweights 
as gifts when we were young:  glass heart,
a globe across whose surface lakes
and rivers swirled darkly, and a triangular


one where three strands tangled in a burst
of color at the top.  Each tried to say
something he couldn’t—Don’t hurt 
me.  Come with me.  We should have a baby.


Then I was lost to him for a while,
and rather than making me feel like a criminal,
he let me drift back on my own and find
it on my desk: a pyramid of cobalt


through which light passed and was eloquent.
So this was what “blue” really meant.

April 1993

My parents were getting ready to celebrate
their fiftieth anniversary.  “A family cruise,”
my brother suggested.  “A compound at the lake”—
this from my sister.  It was all a ruse,


the whole point being to invite us
on a free vacation.  They let us talk.
Then my mother, her voice stripped by laryngitis
to its truest, most essential notes, locked


eyes with my father as she said, “It’s all decided.”
They booked the honeymoon suite on the Delta Queen
and watched, from their stateroom window, starboard side,
the West unfurl.  I don’t believe


they thought of us once, but only of the vast
country around them, in which they were alone at last.

Page 3

credit:  poems from The Golden Hour, (Autumn House Press, 2006)

© Copyright, 2006, Sue Ellen Thompson.
All rights reserved.