Theodore Worozbyt
DINNER WITH THE BLUESJust look at these petunias, plush and red
as arterial blood,
leaves soft as fondled money.Nothing means what we mean it to mean.
And that's the part
I can't ever get right, askingin a true voice for joy, and receiving.
Don't we almost always make
the mistake of confusingwhat's beautiful with what we starve for,
the delusive light reflected
moon-blue and cold as leftovers from the withered pastwhere it seems we seldom got anything
when we were ready, when we needed it most?
Beauty's no cure for the blues.This is the oblique sadness of dropping in
and out of love, how we believe
it must by nature be beautiful to fall,the way memory longs for what was to come,
how Mother and Father would look
unmistakably, perfectly, at usif we were good, if only
we were good.
Even blue flowers can't curethe blues, they only attract
more butterflies, which are beauty
decocted from worms.Just look at this foxglove
spiking the path beyond the window. It cures
something, though just now I don't recall what.Some people say that listening
to the blues can make the blues
taste sweeter, and I know a playerwho claims that to play
Satie on his Ramirez makes the blues
take a hike. But, as always,I'm doubtful. I know how good work
can make the blues
walk the long mile from home,but they always know
how to plant themselves in the seat
on the Greyhound bus beside you,how to borrow a map and read the fine
blue lines like veins.
The blues have practiced to perfectionthe art of showing up just before
a good dinner you've worked all day to prepare,
of waltzing inand pulling up a chair at the head
of the table, of taking the rarest slice
of prime rib, the crispest browned potatoes.And after the blues tell you to get
rid of the flowers and turn down Bill Evans
because they want nothing morethan to see your candle-streaked face
and hear your slowest whisper,
you begin to feel that asking them inafter such a long journey
was, after all, the right thing,
the only thing to do.