False Indigo

These blue mouths

eating light at 

the creek side:

I could kiss them.

Like the smell 

of opals or the 

sound of stones

the weightless 

blue moths 

flock onto the 

branches. 

They too can make 

exquisite dye: blue  

the way brass is 

bright, the way 

jazz is fast.

Daring and 

improbable as 

love, their color’s

true the whole 

blue month of June.

MAGGIE DIETZ is the author of That Kind of Happy (University of Chicago Press, 2016) and Perennial Fall (Chicago, 2006). Read more.

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