BLACK AND BLUE


Maybe, it is a colour
two shades darker than
grief black. It has
a blue cast to it.

It goes through the hues:
possibly; perhaps a little
deeper than black – and,
perhaps; possibly a tad
deeper still than that,
before reaching its true
self – a colour colder
than navy.

Bluer than an ocean
and the ships
with their dead beneath it –
and the hopes those dead had
beneath even that.

Black and blue as mortality –
that's the colour maybe.


• Peter Asher lives in Scunthorpe.