Tuesday Poem - About Blue

Hello. I'm back after having been away again - life keeps taking unexpected turns. Maps don't exist for certain uncertain territories so it's been a case of staying present to the moment, being vigilant, trusting my gut; the upside is that by 'taking our waking slow and going where we have to go' (I'm scrambling Theodore Roethke dreadfully here. . . apologies ;) ) we discover new ways to keep our rudder more-or-less straight in the water; we pick up new tools for our toolboxes, learn better fire-building skills, come to know better where to look and what for, what to bring and what to leave behind. And we discover to our relief that there are ways to introduce light and warmth to dark, unfamiliar landscapes.

My older son Daniel spent last week enjoying in the physical world a number of maneuvers I was finding challenging in my emotional and spiritual one. . . jumping out of airplanes with flimsy parachutes, crossing deep river canyons on spaghetti-thin steel cables, surfing white water rapids. . . From soar to dump to tumble, he loved every moment of it and returned home glowing with health; I swear he looks taller, more tautly muscled and bright-eyed because of his adventures. I, on the other hand, feel a little puffed and out of breath on my separate marathon and have a way to go yet before I can untie my laces and lie back on soft, cool grass. 

But enough of that for now. . . It's Tuesday and I'm already seven days overdue with last week's poem. I don't want to miss another week. 

Just a few quick words about my boat-making process, because the exhibition's opening an hour from now. Making these boats has been enormously soothing during these past hectic weeks. I finished mounting the installation in the Blue Oyster gallery yesterday. . . they're in a room of their own, occupy one full wall from North to South and West to East. For many reasons, I have more depth of feeling for this piece than any other I've made in thirty years of art-making - which says something, doesn't it? It has peeled back the shadows and opened up a myriad new spaces; has contained me and taken me traveling in ways no other 'static' piece has. I've come to see myself and my loved ones more clearly as a direct result of my involvement with this work; these are truths to be grateful for. My hope now is that Drift will go on to bring a sense of calm and replenishment to others who come to experience it. 


As I mentioned, the exhibition, titled A Museum of Obsessions and curated by Jodie Dalgliesh opens to the public at 5.30PM this evening (please come along, anyone who's near enough?). It will be up until 24 December. (You can read more about this group collection here and here.)

(I was thrilled to find that the paper boats become transparent when the film is projected across their surfaces; they look as though they're made of ice or glass. This allows for all kinds of intriguing spatial ambiguities.) 

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For today's TP, I've chosen a poem that relates to this current project quite by chance. I wrote it years before embarking on these bamboo and paper flotillas and years before Antarctica was anywhere in the frame. . . (Don't you love it when your unconscious runs up ahead of you, showing you the way forward even though you might not know it at the time?).    

ABOUT BLUE

Blue is vagabond amongst colours.

Reckless, untamed, it disembodies

whatever becomes caught in it.

Once, I brushed the surface 

of a boat blue; within moments 

there were the ocean and sky - 

no longer a boat in view. 

And have you heard? Blue 

has an appetite for monsters.

Stampeding and bellowing 

like shapes fall into themselves

slip down the throat of blue 

into water the inside colour

of glass.

Imagine a slow drunkenness

on vapours of blue. Easy it is 

to spin dizzy just at the thought

of it coupling some distance 

from shore, at sea with rose madder 

or gold. If you close your eyes

tightly, I think you will find blue
coiling a wind rope, coaxing lines 

of water and air from currents 

of emerald and indigo. 

CB

For more Tuesday Poems, please visit the hub where Brian Turner's wonderful poem Fisherman begins. . . 

"When the fisherman found

he could no longer row his dinghy

the tide went out with his heart . . . "