Blue Poem by Suleman Opio

BLUE
After Tracy K. Smith
I.

In this life that is not life
Transient pleasures are straws
they struggle to clutch.
Hunched in their habitual dolor;
Brows raised, nostrils flared,
They hum the music nestled in their throats while
Penning pithy epitaphs to their hope's demise-
You could have left a little late,
Why did you have to leave
earlier?
Tell us, before you hide, what is
left of our fate.

II.

And I, just like them, know loss
I carry it the way rivers carry secrets
Only whispering to stones. Measuring time with shadows.
There is an empty feeling in my chest,
A gale of longing- cheerful and sad-something primal;
I want to hold out my palm, touch it, sing to it-
A thousand torments dwellin my soul and yet you live there.
Why would you live there?
Are you also pulling breath from the air around me
like the furtive forces of nature that
engender my human weakness?

But it instead slows my breath. Drowns my voice.

III.

We, them and I, are filled with fissures where dreams go to die,
Just like the water, that ripples and lulls light into points
of darkness.
We each court despair with our fingers. Finding solace with each other's grief. Brief respite.
And in tune, we spite the Divinity for this fate.
The shade of the sky was our comfort. Our Chiron.
A bird flew within sight, flapping furiously, as though it was restoring our faith- one more time- beneath it's wings.
But instead,
It hung the clouds on to its wing. And with a single motion, we watched it nudge the blue out of the sky.
And it rained in our lives.