I stick these pages together with blue

The blue-tack tucked in the side of the drawer
reminds me of days when I listened to your

voice non-stop. My younger self wrote your lyrics
with a blue ink italic calligraphy pen on index

cards; I even copied artwork from album sleeves,
shaded in with rainbow-coloured pencils. Leaves

unfurled and fell with your smoky timbre.
I played melancholy chords on my old guitar,

sang your songs, tattooed on my soul,
stapled to my heart, crowned and anchored

for life. I pencil my thoughts with you in mind,
stick these pages together with blue of a different kind.

Kim M. Russell, 10th April 2021

My response to NaPoWriMo Day Ten also linked to earthweal open link weekend

It’s Saturday and day ten of NaPoWriMo 2021, and the challenge looks complicated! It’s from the poet Hoa Nguyen and it’s called ‘Junk Drawer Song’.

Firstly, listened to one of my favourite Joni Mitchell tracks, ‘Blue’, and wrote down what came into my head, without overthinking it or worrying about the notes making sense.

Next, I rifled through the objects in my junk drawer and, on a separate page from the song-notes page, I wrote about the objects in the drawer.

Finally, I brought the two pages of notes together and wrote a poem that wove together ideas and observations from both pages.

58 thoughts on “I stick these pages together with blue”

  3. A beautiful and fitting tribute to Joni, Kim. I am enjoying her music that you and Brendan have been sharing. For some reason she was missing from my parents’ vinyl collection so I have some catching up to do.
    P.S. we got the cat and the poor thing is terrified; he spent the first 2 months of his life in the wild, and the next 4 living with 9 other cats. We are giving him space and hoping he will come round to trusting us!

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    1. Thank you so much, Ingrid. I’ve loved Joni for over 50 years now and can’t imagine life without her.
      I’m glad you have your cat now. You are doing the right thing. Give him space, let him come to you. Tosca was part feral and she took a while to get used to us. She came to me first and slept with me. It took two years for her to warm to David, but once she did, that was it!

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  4. Aw. The resonance of that music we loved so when we were young grows to such a forest! I love the hike here into it via a blue tack in a drawer reveals a long beloved road. Does poetry — “blue of a different kind,” I suppose (or the heart that has changed so?) reveal the forest that grew inside our hearing of that music? I think so. “River” has become a hymn to falling into what I became … Thanks for bringin’ it, Brendan

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  5. Kim, this is sooo neat!!
    I really like your sticky blues. Until my recent cataract surgery I didn’t know that there are so many shades and hues of blue. Now for me it is the prettiest color.
    I have also been writing for NaPoWriMo 2021, have been since 2021. There I am Jim1Jim1.
    ..

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  6. One of my favorite songs from one of my all-time favorite Joni albums. And now I’m adding this fine poetic approach to prompt to my favorite ways to start a Saturday. Write on, Sister.

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  7. Yay, Joni Mitchell. You chose a great one and did it justice. Your poem is a Splendid complement to such a great artist and soulful song. Wonderful. Thanks for sharing. I wish you miracles. xo, Selma.

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  8. I love everything about this. Joni Mitchell’s Blue…..the blue of remembering. These days I am going even farther back to the songs of my mother’s day, that I was raised on….Stardust, I’ll Get By, Smoke Gets In Your Eyes….sigh. Nostalgia!

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  9. Great tribute to Joni and fun inclusion of things in your junk drawer too. This was a fun prompt to work with. I showed my age in mine 🙂
    PS: I could listen to Joni for hours….

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  16. Luv the songs tattooed on your soul, and the writing in pen and ink reminds me of days of a craft called ‘penmanship’

    Happy Wednesday

    Much💛love

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  21. This brings me back to the innocence and intensity of youth, and makes me think of the impact that the musical muses of the different generations has on young people.

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  24. What a wonderful read! I can ‘see’ your younger self doing stuff like that. Our musicians were such heroes/heroines to us back then. Joni Mitchel was / is such a gem!

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  27. “. . . tattooed on my soul,
    stapled to my heart, crowned and anchored . . . ”
    Held that close, internalized with simple tools, that was my love affair with music, too, especially Blue, the blues I couldn’t and wouldn’t express any other way. It didn’t come to me right away that this was Joni, but definitely Joni was one of the top few whose words I wish I had written. You know, I forgot that I actually had time to listen to music back in the day! Love your poem.

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  30. Kim, from the first mention of blue, I knew exactly what and whom you were writing about. Something about that album, the intimacy. She let us all in, and we each have distinct memories of how her music affected changes in how we viewed the world. For me, I could only imagine who I would someday “drink a case of,” you know? THANKS Amy

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