Margo Chaves-Charles

Rhythm 'n Blues


I collect only books and the color blue.
I have succumbed to
the color blue.
Holy and sensuous, mantle of the Virgin Mary
and blue candle to light nights of love.
Blue washes over me like the light in the
"Blue Room" of our house: a round blue pane
from Juarez, my mother's whim: one
blue eye in our family.

I broke that window once, playing
solitary baseball on the front lawn.
A second window, dressed in blue.
Our house could have been mistaken
for a church: stained glass, statues of saints,
Madonnas in blue, house full of prayer.

Blue decorates the corners of my life:
My quilt is blue;
sky in New Mexico,
my lover's eyes when he looks at me,
iris in my garden, intense or pale,
I love them equally,
the way a mother loves her daughters.

The theme is blue: Rhapsody in Blue.
Notes in the quiet spaces of my room.
The rhythm and blues reverberate.
Enamel coffee pot on a black iron stove,
reminds me of Mexico
and someone I loved.
Sam, the only baby now in my life
reaches his little hands to blue,
object of his desire.
Blue bottles on a sill.
Blue vase sits high and round on a window ledge,
at night a blue moon shines in my house.
My hand casts a blue shadow.