M A R C H 1 9 9 5 ![]() BLUEBONNETSby Gail Mazur | |||||||||||||
![]() (For help, see a note about the audio.) Also by Gail Mazur: Young Apple Tree, December (1999) They Can't Take That Away From Me (1998) Go to: An Audible Anthology Poetry Pages
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I lay down by the side of the road in a meadow of bluebonnets, I broke the unwritten law of Texas. My brother was visiting, he'd been tired, afraid of his tiredness as we'd driven toward Bremen, so we stopped for the blue relatives of lupine, we left the car on huge feet we'd inherited from our lost father, our Polish grandfather. Those flowers were too beautiful to only look at; we walked on them, stood in the middle of them, threw ourselves down, crushing them in their one opportunity to thrive and bloom. We lay like angels forgiven our misdeeds, transported to azure fields, the only word for the color eluded me -- delft, indigo, sapphire, some heavenly word you might speak to a sky. I led my terrestrial brother there to make him smile, and this is my only record of the event. We took no pictures, we knew no camera could fathom that blue. I brushed the soft spikes, I fingered lightly the delicate earthly petals, I thought, This is what my hands do well isn't it, touch things about to vanish. Copyright © 1995 by The Atlantic Monthly Company. All rights reserved. The Atlantic Monthly; March 1995; Bluebonnets; Volume 275, No. 3; page 94. | ||||||||||||
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