Poem for My Graduates

Blue in Green

Dawn Potter

Talk about art being its own worst

story: once I made the mistake

of playing Kind of Blue to snare

a baby into slumber.

Compare the crime

to those water-green lilies that teachers

Scotch-tape over the reading corner.

Now picture Monet shuffling the hallways

among our fluorescent children.

He would die of remorse. Meanwhile,

I knifed Miles for the sake of an hour’s

enchanted sleep. Who knew how soon

that breathing baby would light out

screaming into the blue? 


[forthcoming in Same Old Story (CavanKerry Press, 2014)]