Pigment

Blue: definition of mood; a celestial hue to counterpoint clouds; something green is made from; the effect of light in air.

I lay on the mirrorless tarmac
After a long night,
And the stars gave way to morning.
I framed a hapless question:
‘Why does it do this?
Why have sky at all?
Where do all those cold points go,
Those cold places,
Those remote and nightless suns?
Why am I come so low?’

Later in the gleaming morning,
When clouds had swept it into rain,
I waited in a whispering gallery
For a passing sentence.
I remembered the silent libraries
Where I had opened books
To prise their meaning from them,
Turned pages until they sparkled,
Until there were stars on the points of words
And black was white in the sky of the written lines.

Blue: an antipodean endearment; an endangered whale; one of the feline races; a deep sea beset by devils.

There are no explanations, no changing circumstances
Under which I can even grope toward the truth.
Where do the heavens mutate,
As in dark to light,
Night to day,
With circling disappearing stars?
No suns, no moons, no planets?

There are no words in dictionaries,
Not in monochrome, not in colour,
To spell the windless chill I felt,
Sprawled on the hard stone,
Fretful in my bewildered sleep.

Blue: a segment of the visible spectrum at 470 nanometres; a phononym for the past of winds; the colour of the light of law and order; the blood of aristocracy.

My Lord, let me speak in my own defence.
I am not alone, your holy honour,
In succumbing to the will of gravity (specific or otherwise).
There are times when thirst enrages us.
So it was I fell from grace
Outside the Preacher’s Arms,
Where an officer intervened on my behalf.

I do admit my mind has wandered
Being deeply tried by the problems of astrophysics,
Seeking to understand in quantum terms
The blueness of the morning sky.

Blue: an alcoholic lagoon; the colour of panic; an illusion created by refraction; the colour of blood seen through skin.

© BH, 1988

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Ah, this, twenty-nine years old, you know. It’s about the universe and humanity’s inability to deal with it. Well, our eternal quest to understand it and our tragic failure ultimately finding refuge in didacticism and drink.

I've added it here because I decided to try a different colour - in the poem, Viridians - which seems to have condemned the human condition to a solipsistic voyage of self-immolation. 

The two aren't so far apart. Except in time.

Hmmm.

I wrote a third, Yellow Light, in November 2017. The format was evolving, let's say, but I made it. There may be yet more. After all there are millions of colours, I'm told.

NB.
The image borrows hand and feather from Gill Russell's 'Reach' exhibition poster with added stars and streetscape.