Summary

63-65: Rather than hunt for blue things, the speaker prefers to receive them as gifts or find them by chance. She wanted to travel to famous blue places for research, but she could not write grant applications that were both impersonal and urgent. Once, “you” gave her a square of blue fabric dye; the instructions urge the user to keep the cloth moving.

66-70: The speaker finds a blue termite poison strip that says “noli me tangere” (#66). She leaves it on the ground, though a male satin bowerbird would not have. These birds build structures covered with blue objects and painted with blue fruits. Successful bowers might attract dozens of females in a season, others none at all. The females only mate once a year and raise their eggs alone. Perhaps the book Bluets is the speaker’s bower.

71-72: Solitude can be...