Shades of Blue
by Subhaga Crystal Bacon
Which came first? I ask though I know.
I woke to the sunlight and blue sky—
maybe that lit the spark of ease and glimmer
of joy while still in bed. The full day ahead,
I went walking with the dog into new growth
glowing along mats of folded yellow grass,
up the hillside, rock to rock to where water still
runs that last month was snow. Slick moss glows
and chartreuse algae flows like hair in the shower.
I stopped to catch my breath—the first blue shape
flew across the fence line to alight. One, two, three
more dive and land, lift to thin branches of sage.
Mountain bluebirds returned, I follow happiness
where it lives, tentative and shy, in the delicate air.
I woke to the sunlight and blue sky—
maybe that lit the spark of ease and glimmer
of joy while still in bed. The full day ahead,
I went walking with the dog into new growth
glowing along mats of folded yellow grass,
up the hillside, rock to rock to where water still
runs that last month was snow. Slick moss glows
and chartreuse algae flows like hair in the shower.
I stopped to catch my breath—the first blue shape
flew across the fence line to alight. One, two, three
more dive and land, lift to thin branches of sage.
Mountain bluebirds returned, I follow happiness
where it lives, tentative and shy, in the delicate air.
Subhaga Crystal Bacon (they/them) is the author of four collections of poetry including most recently the Isabella Gardner Award winning Transitory, a finalist for a Lambda Literary Award for Transgender Poetry, 2023, from BOA Editions, and Surrender of Water in Hidden Places, winner of the Red Flag Poetry Chapbook Prize, 2023. A Queer elder, they live in rural northcentral Washington on unceded Methow land.