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The Green Tuxedo ť "The Blue World"

The Blue World

There, says the guidebook, they live
in peace all winter: tunnels glowing glacier-blue

in the short afternoons, the worst predators
gone, gone, gone: it's frozen,

but under the snow a paradise
of shrews, thirteen-lined ground squirrels,

deer mice, voles, who feed for months
on the forest floor. There's no

wind. The air warms
in the narrow channels. Silence.

Silence. True, some scrabble
up to the crusted surface, discontent

with the crystal walls, the delicate
ice-carved rooms. True, the great grey owl

hears its prey through a three-foot snowfall:
slim weasels negotiate the maze:

dangers, even now. A vole
emerging into the winter trail

surprises a lapdog out for its walk,
whose dormant instincts quicken:

who seizes it. Shakes it dead.
Drop it, girl! Good girl! We pass

the fresh crater a squirrel made, having exited
a high branch—

and its quick prints off to a different
safety. So comic: a pratfall!

Here, my love: something to make you laugh.
No, no, I'm happy. Honestly. Light,

filtered and blue, softened, all afternoon
through the cold walls—

Really I am. See, I'm smiling.

Copyright Š Janet Holmes 1994.
Originally published in The Beloit Poetry Journal.

The Green Tuxedo, University of Notre Dame Press, 1998.
ISBN 0-268-01036-6. $12.00 paperback. 72 pages.
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Read another poem from The Green Tuxedo:

"Against the Literal"

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