Never Describe the Sky as Azure

unless it’s made of stone.

           لاجورد  Lāzhward

migrating from Persia,

           smuggled from Farsi

to Arabic & thrown

           like a wingless bird

across the sky-dark sea

           until its version

spills from English mouths.

           Lapis lazuli.

O trap of beauty,

           you are a fiction ...

Exhausted at day’s end

           of an oven-summer

I duck out of the house

           into the truth of twilight

blue: no other name

           than azure, azure,

and no other home

           the color of this sky

struck above this earth,

           no path to heaven

except through this dirt.