In the morning chalk dusted light you wake
Draw back the curtain on your lidded eyes
Blink in a dawning day, and, for all this, make
Man gaze at the universe that so readily twinkles back
A soft celestial song, sounded though the tack
They pause, allowing you to be heard
Baby and blue and bird

For every constellation that pulls men through oceans
For every compass, and map and chart
For every head, for every beating heart
The baby blue will sing, oh and will he sing!
A quiet aria, but let him glide and glide
Up past the paper sails, and round the mast’s old tale
To perch on the sweetest of symphonies
But then! Oh then, by hour by hour
Filling with music, that long leaden tower
He will stop, and catch their heavy lids
Children of the docks, dreaming of the stars
Of life beyond tack and sail and sea
As they whisper in etchings their plans
To blue, on the boards of the berth deck
You listen, to every scattering word
Baby and blue and bird

I swear by the wood stork, the albatross, the kite
The dip of kingfishers in the water
I would adore you all my sorry life
And adore you every one thereafter.

You, still written upon my heart,
Running rampant throughout this body
I cannot lay still enough to sleep.

And each time I turn,
I can feel you forgetting
how my hand feels
in yours.