I

that the pigment belongs to the olivewing
alone
            that we don a fool’s blue
            a trick in truth
            that your lover’s iris
            is just another clever structure
            that its scales are stitched
            to savage light
            that our talents lie
            in aposematic displays like these
that our strange warnings
could keep anyone close

II

that existing here
requires an artist’s trust in the shade
                        that borrowing the model’s eyes
                        shares the labour of creation
                        that you lie behind each pose
                        ghost and pentimento
                        that 19th-century alchemy
                        could remake the maker
                        that through its wintry focus
                        a lesion softens to forget-me-not
that to be stilled in its render
is to be                   again

III

that hunger for a spectrum
awakened as contagion
                                    that our ancestors
                                    trapped each shade in unison
                                    that to see a colour
                                    you must hook it with a word
                                    that to name a thing
                                    is to make it yours
                                    that somewhere in our wide longing
                                    we found blue at last
                                    that it was there
                                    feral and breathless
that before capture
it wandered