Blue Idiots

I've never seen them, but I know they're blue somewhere in this solar system. They're unabasedly blue trees, their blue bark powder blue, leaves indigo blue. Trees give birth to human babies, little ones only born within that mystery planet's biota, but only when it rains with hurricane-force winds. I recognize the only fact in this solar system, that these trees must be blue because that's the hue of your eyes, your tongue, you're blue clear through, more lapis lazuli than beryl or robin's egg, enough to blend into the bluish broth of life. If you weren't blue, then the whole solar sytem would totter and collapse. I run along the periphery of the trees, collecting all the babies, giving them to sapient life forms wishing children themselves. I never get newborns for myself becasue it's desperate, messy, endless labor. I haven't any time left over for myself. The shrill winds and thug-tough rains fall across my face, but I slog on because the work is necessary. My lover is the reason I'm certain that these trees are blue. She's an idiot and savant, because she sings the blues in a dissolute and profound manner, more noirish than other singers. I communicate with her using simple blue words. She's a woman who can't fathom her own gifts, her own sweet enchantment. I'm an idiot since the only thing I can do is assemble babies. Far away from the blue forest I can't see anything because I'm clinically blind. I've been told my hair is peacock blue. Two idiots: we're helplessly in love. Our blueness gets confirmed whenever we see auras thrown off our naked bodies. It's then we understand the trees are for real, since we aren't dreamers but lovers. I gather up these babies, doing only my idiot's labor, encasing them within indigo leaves. I listen to her sing the blues as colossal winds and rain try to extinguish me rather than save the babies. When she and I die, blue will vanish with us, that one blue truth we know. They'll be no longer anyone to accumulate the far-reaching solar system's babies, for only blue idiots like ourselves can rescue them. We'll be the last of our species.

George Sparling has been published in many literary magazines including Tears in the Fence, Lynx Eye, Hunger, Rattle, Red Rock Review, Rattle, Paumanok Review, Lost and Found Times, and Potomac Review. He has had many jobs, such as a welfare caseworker in East Harlem, a counselor/reading instructor in the Baltimore City Jail, and a scuba diver for placer gold in the Trinity Alps of Northern California for two years. He tries through fiction and poetry to give all dark things the light they require to exist unconditionally. The tension between persons living in pain and the struggle not to fail as human beings also concerns him.

Email: George Sparling

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