Indigo
Wandering through the campus on a summer afternoon,
heading for our favourite picnic spot
beneath the trees, beside the Hepworth sculpture,
we came upon a group of women by a vat of dye
dark as ink, into which they dipped
intricately pegged and knotted cloths
then, with rubber-gloved hands, wrung them out
and hung them on little washing lines strung
between the branches of the trees,
where they swayed in the breeze, a row of flags,
striped and marbled, checked and bled
and spider-webbed, white lacing through
the deep rich blue of indigo.
One woman took my children by the hand
and let them peer into the well of dye,
that inky lake, and stir the rags about
and still we talk of it, of the magic
wrought by dye, the blue washing
among the leaves and sky
the memory of it joining those
of other things seen here -
bluebells, peacocks, weeping willows,
adding another story to the place,
a history of blue.
(Lancaster)
Page(s) 9
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