Blue People

Down some country road,

Down the macadam, concrete, dirt, brick, gravel, cobblestone way

Beyond the civilization and the forest primeval

Is a lane between hedges

Whereas the outer edges

Are painted a deep unfavorable blue

A dark and deep hue

As forbidding as the heart of smoke

And down the lane of hedges is broken time

Smashed clocks, torn calendars, shattered sundials, erased chalk ticks

Except destruction cannot hold back the seasons

So you will come upon stubble of harvest

Or the blur of swirling snow

Or the daffodil of spring

Or the dried brown crust of baked hay

On the seventh Sunday of a summer day

But they plant the harvest in the same old way

As did the old in the day of youth

On the same same field with the same same seeds

And when the snows come they light the same fire

To huddle by and make the same complaint

The faces change and never change

Young once and elderly all melded into one

Because it’s not safe to be different or strange.

But there is no life

In the stifling suffocating surreal stagnantmentation of status quo

The pond of time always ripples

And the stones of castle foundations crumble and crack.

How do you find salvation

If you never find suffering?

You do not find life without death.

You do not get to heaven without going through the singe of hell.