Crater Lake Blues revisited

Talking Before or After a Reading

A recent visitor to my blog left an interesting remark:

I stumbled across your poem "Crater Lake Blues" a very long time ago; I'm not sure where, now (perhaps on your blog?). I grew up in Oregon, and was a frequent visitor to Crater Lake, but have never found something that captures it quite like your poem. The last line in particular, "The blue in which all lonesome blues dissolve," was particularly resonant with me, and has stayed with me throughout the years. Thank you for sharing it; especially as Oregon burns with wildfires, I've been holding onto poems like yours that paint the beauty of the wild in words.

I'm happy to discover that a poem of mine from the 1980s would prove so resonant even in Korea some twenty years later that people would still be stopping to listen, so let's sit here for a moment and re-read that loaded poem:

Crater Lake Blues

A blue, blue, blue Olympian eye;
The blue of arctic ice, refracted sky;
The blue of coolly burning distant love;
The blue in which all lonesome blues dissolve.

That's the one, my poem written before an extended deadline, in front of a thirsty man, and after a first few drops of rain!