Blues

Blues.

Just the sound of the word brings up images.

Blues in the night.

St. Louis blues.

Old time, deep south, hot sultry, no sound but the crickets and mosquitos,

too hot to sleep, so you lie there,

sweat soaked,

tossing and turning,

moaning about everything that is bad in your life

and doesn’t look like it’s gonna get better by morning,

deep black blues.

oh yeah.

But, if you think a little deeper,

pull out the entire pallet,

you get other blues.

Add in a little silver, for example, and you get:

Winter blues.

Cold, hard, trees frosted, ground crunching under the feet,

sky so pale you can almost not see it,

so cold you can’t feel your feet

or your fingers

any more,

shoveling that snow,

slipping on the ice,

got to shovel out the car,

cause we’re out of tp and coffee,

blues.

Or the fall,

with its trees to cut back, leaves to rake, house to ready for winter,

the summer is over, and I’m afraid I can’t survive the dark one more time,

and if I get the flu there’s no one to take care of me,

blues.

Or the spring time,

so pale that the blue isn’t enough,

and the green comes through.

How can you have the blues

with all that sprouting,

and growing,

and spurting,

the newborn life,

and the happiness of their gamboling?

Or do you have that month of fasting before Easter,

dark time of the soul because everyone else is happy,

nothing but work

with wackos coming at you from all sides with complaints

when what you really want is to be sitting on a beach in Florida with a waiter half your age

in a bow-tie, short pants and cuffs,

serving you drinks with umbrellas and fruit stuck on the rim,

blues?

Throughout the centuries,

people have suffered.

And sung the blues.

A howl from the soul,

before you pull yourself up,

straighten the tie,

put on the plastic smile,

go out

and survive.

But after you’ve had your howl,

and done the I will survive bit,

there is one much more important thing to remember,

in my opinion:

the blue, and other colors, of the eyes of family,

the blue of the true blue loyalty of those watching over you,

the blue of that little stripe of silvery pale blue on the horizon,

even during the worst of the storms.

Those, and only those, are the real blues.

 

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