Cobalt Blue

I wrote this when my second-oldest was 5 years old. He’s now 11. Ever since he could sit up, he would bounce back and forth, back and forth, on his favorite brown couch that traveled from Virginia to New York. It had cost next to nothing at the thrift store.

Sadly, the couch had to go earlier this year. Bouncing and pets got the best of it.

The poem is about the shy, pensive look on his blue eyes when I’d catch him bouncing.

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Cobalt Blue

Cobalt blue, such as painted on

white plates, is what,

if you catch the glint off
those bouncing eyes deposited in
minor depressions as he

tightens his lips, those grinning
strokes at each end,
rolled eyes, and shakes that blushed and
brown shaggy head, you see.
The pigment bleeds through

the air into names
of blue colors

five years ago brushed and fire-
proofed. Delicate, cast. So

the wisdom of ceramicists have
found, and I, him.