The Blue Lady

The Blue Lady was written as part of LSU’s collaboration with poet Lynne Knight in 2019. Lynne offered composition students at LSU her poems, which were then set and premiered on November 11. This piece uses the words of Knight’s “The Book of Common Betrayals,” illustrating the ultimate betrayal the “blue lady” commits by being “nothing but a common garden bird.”

The Book of Common Betrayals by Lynne Knight

The first one I don’t remember.
Then I was walking down the road, new shoes,
heard the Blue Lady calling
and kept right on going. Her song
was too mournful, she never used words.
Or maybe I already knew she was nothing
but a common garden bird.

 The next ones belong to everyone.
I swore I’d never touched the broken watch.
Never taunted kids from the bad end of town
for wearing the same clothes all week long.
Stole, yes, but was afterwards unable
to see the brightness of penny candy.

 Then the nights I let one of them love me
while I cried out to another,
not a name, not even words,
just sound I would later hear
from the downstairs rooms.  Fabrics
draining of color, floorboards
letting go of their nails

 while the moon—because I watched,
it seemed—pulled a cloud
over its face, thick cloth
of the confessional.
Even then, my heart would not yield.
Everywhere, signs of treachery—
how this lobelia by my window

 loosens its blue at dusk
to lighter blue, edged pink,
until it seems more cloud (displaced)
than flower. They say the faces
of the penitent glow whiter
than the lily at the moment of remorse,
though this too might be illusion.