Blue

BENJAMIN NASH

May 22, 2020

We waited outside the grocery

store in a line like they used

to do for toilet paper in the

old Soviet Union or in Cuba,

I saw a blue canoe tied on to

the top of a car in the parking

lot and I thought it would be

nice to float down the river

in silence without any fear,

a hundred years ago they

could still hear them hammer

the nails into their pine boxes

with their blue bodies still

a little alive with dying,

I saw the graves lined up in

a row in the rural cemetery,

it makes you sad and I know

my father is hiding in his

house and I am right on the

edge of old age myself now,

they die alone in a hospital

without a hug or a last kiss,

the virus brings suffering

and sorrow and you begin to

understand what the soul is,

at least the bluebonnet won’t

make you sick if it touches

your face and neither will the

sun or the sky up above you,

nor will the people you know

waiting for you and your

blue face holding them at last.

BENJAMIN NASH is an Austin poet with work published in Texas Observer, Blueline, Pembroke Magazine, Pilgrimage, and elsewhere.