‘Indigo’, graphite on paper, 2017

Indigo
for Catherine Salmon

It was dusk when I swam with the dead whale,
but I did not know it was there.

On the shore a group of people began to gather,
I joined them, I saw it – open and rotten.
The flesh hung like icicles,
stalactites tapering from the roof.

Catherine I want to draw it

Three metres; graphite; erasable;
I trace the edges before I begin.

Name it indigo she says, for the colour
of the place we don’t know –
deep in the sea,
deep in the sky.

When my shoulder aches and my palm
is stained silver she says come back
with fresh eyes: which is to walk away
(blind) and come back seeing again.

I never noticed the onset of her dementia,
perhaps it too had a colour.

Lou Annabell

Lou Annabell is a Manawatū born poet based in Te-Tara-O-Te-Ika-a-Maui / The Coromandel Peninsula. In 2023 she completed her MA in Creative Writing at the International Institute of Modern Letters.