Self-Portrait in Blue, by Lynne Kemen

At Dusk, by Eugene Janssen (Sweden) 1902

Self-Portrait in Blue
 
I watch with amazement how blue dusk
transforms what exists by day
into its own language.
 
At dusk, sunlight shadows
take on their own life,
cloak of tree branches
cast mysterious shapes.
 
Scrambling to see before darkness
overtakes, I try to name
the children in the distance:
angels, dancers?
 
A thousand guesses,
racing against time
against the gathering dark.
 
The pools of blue darkness become
deeper until they disappear.
 
I am most myself 
when I vanish.
​
​Lynne Kemen

​Lynne Kemen lives in Upstate New York. Her full-length book of poetry, Shoes for Lucy, was published by the SCE Press in 2023. Her chapbook, More Than a Handful was published in 2020. Her work is anthologized in Seeing Things (2020) and What We See on Our Journeys (2021), The Memory Palace: an ekphrastic anthology (2024), and Seeing Things, 2 (2024). Lynne is the President of the Board of Bright Hill Press. She is also an editor for the Blue Mountain Review and a lifetime member of The Southern Collective Experience; she is a board member of The Southern Collective Community Outreach and of The Franklin Free Library.