Written at BookTree during a poetry reading featuring Joanne Clarkson and Heidi Seaborn. Inspired by poems by both of them, in combination with the cover of Susan Abulhawa’s The Blue Between Sky and Water, which was on the shelf behind them as they were reading.

‘Blue’ and ‘sky’
often travel together

in the poet’s
newest verse

on the covers of books
sprinkled throughout the racks

in a meditative instrumental
I recorded one score and four years ago—
played in one pass
without preparation
simultaneously committed to tape
with an eye on the oeuvre of Bill Nelson

They are natural allies
though ‘blue’ has been known
to dally, from time to time, with ‘water’

The horizon
is the border separating them—
and the connecting thread

(20 January 2018)