I wrote a poem in 5th grade that was published in the local newspaper. In the olden days, a home-delivered newspaper was the equivalent of Amazon and Facebook combined. A poem distributed to doorsteps across town was the late 1900s version of going viral.
I attended an elementary school called Nativity, whose chief academic bone fide was its annual parking lot festival that raised money for the school-church-diocese-Vatican (accounting was never clear). In a writing class helmed by an elderly nun, we learned that poetry is a rote process of rhyming words. All creativity, thought, and unusual meter should be strictly avoided. I was not a defiant child and hardly self-aware. I performed the assignment dutifully. Somehow the poem ended up in a pool of submissions to the newspaper’s student poetry contest.
I do recall excitement at seeing my name and words in print, but I was quickly distracted by the latest episode of Buck Rogers, my must-see TV. The nun provided no follow up, and I don’t remember any further poetry instruction at the school. Family encouragement was unthinkable since a published poem wasn’t an athletic accolade. If neighborhood kids took any notice, I assume they opined mockingly until attention shifted to juicier school gossip or a quixotic fight (kick-the-can street rules were a frequent trigger).
While most details of my childhood are gone or blurred with fictions, I still remember the lines:
Blue is the sky
Blue is the sea
Blue is the school shirt
Of Nativity
Blue is the little flame
On the stove
Blue is the sweater
That grandma wove
Blue is the blue jay
Mean as can be
Chasing other birds
Up the tree
But blue is the sky
And always the sea
Blue will forever
Be The Nativity
My elegy on the color blue is hilariously adolescent. The poem evokes a religious concept foreign to my adult sensibilities and an appreciation for the parochial school uniform, which was never true. The dress code was a light navy blue polo shirt with a crest, sartorial branding that today’s fashion houses could only dream of enforcing on their tween influencers. I hated wearing the cult attire, especially walking to school as a clear target. Dressing in the same color every day ruined my appreciation for the actual sky. I retain a strong distaste for that particular shade of blue in clothes, furnishings, and art.
So what I was trying to express in the color metaphor? I doubt I was attesting to the virgin birth; I went to Nativity School by happenstance, not earnest belief. Perhaps I was trying to comment on my lived experience via the color. I wonder if blue was less of a metaphor and more of a foil.
In the first two stanzas, I wrote a straight forward list of blue things. The third stanza takes an emotional left turn, giving a specific example of blue as an attack. The final stanza repeats the opening lines with a “but,” as if to re-affirm the constancy of blue, and deepens it by adding “always” and “forever.” The emphasis on permanence feels reactionary to the previous lines. Why throw in a contrary metaphor only to capitulate to the omnipotence of blue in the end?
In a wholly biased re-reading of my ten-year-old self, the poem seems to be a boy’s surrender. I questioned the supposed benevolence of blue (a stand-in for school and religion) yet was ultimately resigned to its unquestionable mandate over me. Blue was natural but oppressive, both beautiful and mean.