The Blue Hour
This evening has arrived to very little fanfare; no golden trumpets.
The sheet-rock halls are quiet. The pot is empty. No smoke lies about,
no sanctifying scent.
The heron has come and gone, back across the river, so many times, the banks no longer keep his memory. The river rolls on. The sea, somewhere, is still waiting.
The space between the trees is one thing, and then another. Something, then nothing. Crickets saw away their anonymities without accompaniment.
Human voices too, wobble toward singing over a certain distance, then quiet down. The sun has set. The sky gathers a humid vigil.
A certain kind of light has collapsed in favor of another kind. That language of the sea is inescapable. All things are in a state of flux. The night’s heart will bleed a miscible darkness, blood-flow as a thing per se, but there is no proper distance, no place to stand and get a better look.
Dusk of dusty windowsills. Dusk of vacuum cleaners, and leaky faucets. Dusk of your voice in my ear though you are gone. Dusk of wooden tables upon which many things have spilt; my dear, it’s too late now.
You’ll have to take me as I am.
All I’ve left undone. All I’ve left unsaid. What has risen out of the negative relation,
vespers from a moon-shaped font, daily will be so, forever. So, let forgiveness be such a little thing as a final word, and all sentences contained therein,
Amen.
“The Blue Hour” is William Steele’s first published poem. He works as a paramedic/firefighter on Cape Cod. He spends his off-work time raising three children with his wife, working on their house, and looking for time to sit and hammer words into patterns that sound good to him. He holds a B.A. in English from the University of San Diego.