“The heart is blue/it aches for its own fuel…” –Jeremy Nathan Marks

Blue as the sky on a day when the rain has run

Its course. Blue as the water beneath ice, cold and waiting

For spring to warm and melt. Blue as the jaybird

Perched among the lilacs fooling no one. We think

Of fuel as a motive force, a thing for dead machines

To use to rev and stutter to life. We think of fuel

As the gas in the stove, not the blue flame that warms

Our food, turns spices into vehicles of heat. We think

Of blue as a thing of ice and need, not the bringer of sun

And day. But the heart itself knows blue in all its shades,

From the jeans at the foot of the bed to the hydrangea

And morning glory out the window, from the dark distant

Mountains up to the pale sky framing clouds. Sorrow.

Loneliness. A loss for words. A lost friend. A lost love.

In one direction, purple like thistle in highland heather,

Reminder of battles lost and won. In the other, green

Like the spring’s first blades of grass, poking through

Snow, asserting the incipient end of winter, for now.

For now I will cling to blue as to peacock feathers, wild

Elaborate abundance, souvenir of past good fortune,

Blue as my eyes searching every other eye for a sign:

Is spring coming? Will the sun return to me? Will there be

Warm breezes, bees, robins, picnics, new love?

Are you the one to bring these things into being?

Image from Agents of SHIELD.