Blue

— for Willy DeVille, 1950-2009

In 1978, in a dorm room
in Providence, Rhode Island,
on a narrow bed,
in the dark except for
the blue dial light
of a stereo receiver,
a perfect moment
was played out to the sounds
of Mink DeVille’s
“Mixed-Up Shook-Up Girl.”

She wore
(for a moment)
new pale blue lingerie,

and I was the one who was
mixed up, shook up,
so strung out
I didn’t know what to do,
since my only reference points
were the hustled moments in back seats
that had come before this.

Then we moved together —
and oh, how we muddled through,
what a sweet mess we made of the discovery.
It took hours, thank God,
for us to figure it out.

Willy DeVille, I heard today
that you’re
gone.
I’d forgotten you
and your slick suited street heart till now —
how could that have happened?

Thank you, Willy,
for that night,
for how easy you made
the right thing feel,
your simple touch on a sharp-picked triad
showing me how to move when movement
was the only sense I needed,
telling me that all I needed to do
to begin
was to tell her out loud
how much she knotted me up,
and then to forgo pretty speech,
to move, to sway, to fall and rock,
to cradle her,
both of us lost and then found in blue,
the blue dial of the receiver holding
the rest of the night in place for us;

thank you, Willy.

For you I’m picking triads
on a dusty Spanish guitar tonight,
trying to play a song
I haven’t thought of in ages.

Gratitude is due tonight
for the way you turned
a dorm room, a narrow bed,
and a blue light into
some Manhattan romance,

for the way you turned
a girl
and a boy
into sweet ghosts
beginning to haunt the edge of love —
the two of us knowing nothing of it
before that moment
when we heard that song
and we started,
at last,
to learn.