L’Heure Bleu
L’Heure Bleu
They ask me another name
for the l’heure bleu, and all I can think of
are yellow squares, kitchen framed
by eventide, those windows
where women work–
and through the yellow, beams
of door jamb, a chintz
of suds, dish rag, stretch-marked
Saran–
cupped wells of coffee–the dark sides
of too many moons, or canyons
of a more distilled amber (burning
as it goes down)–
eyes flecked
with dab, veins rooting legs
before a sink–
I don’t mean to make it sound ugly–that gold glimmer as beautiful as
cake, luminous as
honey comb, and in the blue-black backdrop,
moths shimmer/flap
against sheened
screens;
and in the putting it all away,
one more helping,
helping–
TV greys elsewheres
but there a rose will smell as sweet even painted
dripping Dawn–
no fear
no fear
**********************************
Draft poem for Real Toads Open Platform hosted by Marian. The l’heure bleu is the blue hour- a time of dusk/evening that is exactly what it sounds like. Painting is one of mine; watercolor with windows added through iphone app. (Ha.) All rights reserved.
Tags: blue hour poem, eve in kitchen poem, http://withrealtoads.blogspot.com, kitchen in eve poem, l'heure bleu, manicddaily, women working
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ManicDDaily 
June 2, 2016 at 12:27 pm
Oh! Love this. Those kitchen lights surely attract them. I relate, being a kitchen-dweller myself. 🙂
June 2, 2016 at 3:54 pm
This is truly exquisite, K.
June 3, 2016 at 10:48 am
This is a most brilliantly poised poem.. the tension is in the viewpoint of the outside looking in on scenes known yet unknowable. The whole is painterly, and introspective.
June 3, 2016 at 10:50 am
Thanks so much, Kerry– was thinking I should cut a few lines since posting but will wait a bit I guess! Thanks. K.
June 3, 2016 at 10:53 am
LOVE your blue painting with its yellow windows. And I really enjoyed the glimpse through the kitchen windows “where women work”. I have spent a lifetime peeping through windows, imagining the lives and stories inside. A beautiful poem.
June 4, 2016 at 1:11 am
Powerful and beautiful.
June 4, 2016 at 6:57 am
An hour where day meets night; for most women, not even the end of the day’s work, but a marker, perhaps, of what to appreciate about what has been done, and a looking forward to that peace that comes with exhaustion and purposes met–beautifully lyric and descriptive as well as evocative, k. I feel I have stood at the window looking out(and back in) many times.
June 4, 2016 at 1:49 pm
So beautiful and very atmospheric
Greetings from London.