Conor O'Reilly writes

How to Be a True Blue

Where do we draw the line blue across the page,

to highlight all those fine ‘true’ characteristics?

Honour and dignity or a humble approach to time and the constraints

Imposed by the rigid barriers that maintain trust

In brothers, friends, employees and the weather,

Or just a sense of the difference between good, bad or god’s

Work and the devil’s dark hand tentatively dwindling

caressing the soft sandalwood grooves of the Knight’s mane

reading the certainty of the chess board: despite our intentions

and purposes one must always move in the appropriate fulcrum

of three up and one to the side tactically moving forward

with a sidestep to assess where the pawns will line up

and where’s best to tactically recline and wait for the moment

to ride once more, armour shining in the setting sunlight

and sword unsheathed and raised; ‘I will die for you’

shouted until the end when the final step is taken to the side:

True to the cause, true to the colour – more like the sun, yellow.