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| Image/ Chris Munnik |
As Blue Fades
Which defines you best, a creaking lid or the light-turned flower?
The coffee’s steam or smoke wafting from your hand.
Your bowls color my shelves; I touch them daily.
Sound fills their bodies with memory.
The lighter’s click invokes your name.
And the stepping stones to nowhere, your current address.
If the moon could breathe would its breath flavor our nights?
I picture a separate one above your clouded island.
The dissipating blue in filtered light.
Above the coral. Above the space your ashes should share.
Where the boats rise and fall, like chests, like the waning years.
Like a tide carrying me towards yesterday’s reef.
Or the black-tailed gull spinning in the updraft.
Originally published in Underfoot, and included in Okaji's first full-length collection, Our Loveliest Bruises (3: A Taos Press, 2025)
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| Robert Okaji |
Two years ago, Robert Okaji was diagnosed with late-stage metastatic lung cancer, which he found annoying. But thanks to modern science, he's still living in Indianapolis with his wife, poet Stephanie L. Harper, stepson, cat, and dog. Recent publications include Our Loveliest Bruises (3: A Taos Press, 2025) and His Windblown Self (Broadstone Books, 2025).
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