Picasso’s Blue Period
Near the triangle sand dunes
Picasso held a sun umbrella shading his mistress,
her hibiscus bathing suit dry as a coconut shell.
She stopped abruptly: “How blue the ocean is.”
What a peasant interpretation of color!
Didn’t she know there are many shades of blue?
Her hands were blue crabs on a coloring book,
shifting side to side, filling in solid colors.
Her brown eyes had blue flecks in their irises.
Her snapdragon lips had hints of periwinkles.
Even her raspberry freckles had rings of indigo.
Across the channel, London had grey-brown fog
mixed in light-blue rain falling mutely on cobblestones.
If he bit her lip, it would bruise cobalt blue.
Her neck veins throbbed a tattoo of blue, blue, blue.
She was still prattling about the shockingly blue sky.
Couldn’t she see the ocean and sky were more colors?
Nothing is totally one color. Even grass has blueness.
Shadows of the footprints in the sand were powder-puff blue.
The seagull wingtips flash blue, blue, blue,
buoys rock in the cradle of blue-white wave-crests.
A shrimp boat captain removes greenish-blue seaweed.
Everything is blue as Picasso’s clenched, frustrated knuckles.
