Distinctly Montana Magazine
Issue link: https://digital.distinctlymontana.com/i/20776
Literary Nook DEPARTMENT Borrowing Blue POEM BY M. L. SMOKER I’m not the painter here, I leave that to you, but blue is the color of my father’s camping cup, left tonight on the Formica counter. This pen I am writing with. And the beaded moccasins and belt I danced in. My grandmother made these for her as a child— spelling out in blue beads on blue beads each of our names, our collective history in an invisible pattern only we would recognize. Not the blue of Montana sky either, not that at all, but the pulse of lake water lapping at your ankles, the temperature rising as a storm gathers on the plains. The push and pull of forgiveness. I’m already thinking of leaving again. Did I tell you this? How can I speak of this wind, How it has no color, no sense, no guilt. It makes me feel even more lonely than I would ever let on. I’m guessing you figured this much already. (We will never stop missing them, will we, the parent each of us has lost.) I’ll be honest, I have no idea what I would see in the paintings if I were to visit you. I like to think there would be some kind of end to the blue, a visual end to what is never adequate: blue flame, blue bead, blue ovary, blue lung. See how easily we fail? How can we believe that our secrets are in good hands— yours resting at the bottom of Flathead Lake, mine held in a small leather suitcase beneath the stairs. I have not worn those moccasins or belt for over six years now. We should both be ashamed. Look at us. Look, as the grey fog settles into your streets outside, how the near-white canvases wait. You almost didn’t notice again. Just like I almost didn’t notice the wind dying down for evening. So yes, let’s call it Montana blue, the vanishing point. Maybe this is the real reason I have never learned to trust in color. How can you take back the kind of blue you’ve been dreaming—trust it will make something unhappen— if it is the same blue you’re made of? M.L. Smoker belongs to the Assiniboine and Sioux tribes of the Fort Peck Reservation in northeast- ern Montana. She currently lives in Helena, where she works for the Office of Public Instruction as the Director of Indian Education. A recipient of the Richard Hugo Fellowship, she holds an MFA from the University of Montana in Missoula. Her collection of poems, Another Attempt at Rescue, was published by Hanging Loose Press in the spring of 2005. This poem is reprinted by permission of the publisher. www.distinctlymontana.com 37