Mixing blues

Shifty Henry zigzags now, from Blackstone in his lost lead crypt, to young John LaFarge, painting in Paradise (a vernal neighborhood on the outskirts of Newport).  It's all about practice, practice, practice... the ability to take a deep breath & keep going down, down...

Note the nod to that other deep-sea "poem-including-history" diver, Ezra Pound.  See the powerful whisper of his Notes for Canto CXX, near the very end.)  (Bit of Joyce's Ulysses in there too, just to top it off.)

11

Rose early, with the birds, and thought of Paradise. 

Went out into the Garden, in straw shoes

and a purple kimono, always mixing shades

and colors in his mind – white-spotted, Sonora blues,

Rita blue, Southern blue, Cataline, clouded, dotted, 

San Gorgonio Arrowhead blues.  Blurring

below early sunlight, a reddish yellow bells – billowing 

with a yell like a bull in the snotgreen, rusted

diaphane. Breathe deep. A winding blue 

trajectory – steep spiral–blue-writ with violets. 

That is Paradise.

Young John LaFarge