by Rebecca Slater

All the blues I’ve ever known
add up to this –
this single perfect blue
which is really a thousand blues,
bottled up like the beachedblue glass
on my mother’s mantelpiece,
my father’s bluebuttoned shirt
stained from Sunday afternoons
painting my brother’s blue-walled bedroom –
a boyish bias, ever since that
blue plastic beach bucket
Blue Thomas train set –
those endless blue mornings,
staring down at the tileblue bottom –
bluebeating feet, bluewater lips –
the blue swimmer crab pulled into
my grandfather’s boat,
the blue fish brooch
pinned to my grandmother’s
deadblue breast
her Winnie Blue breath
floating like fog
across the Clarenceblue mornings –
blueink crosswords and
bluebellied lorikeets
on the outback veranda
all this –
the bloodblue bruises
from my first blue bicycle,
the muddyblue fingers
from my mother’s mulberry tree
– this
in a single blue moment
as I look up to the island skies
and say goodbye.

‘All the Blues I’ve Ever Known’ was recently announced as a runner-up of Oriel College’s Gower Memorial Prize. She says, ‘”All the Blues I’ve Ever Known” is a is a poetic response to my hometown, Sydney, which I recently left to pursue my studies in literature and writing at Oxford University’.