Blue Hues

This is a poem I wrote when I first started dating Aubrey. I was taking a poetry class in college, something I didn't see myself doing before, but was really enjoying learning about crafting tight, well-spun phrases. The idea of this poem started at a football game when I was looking into Aubrey's eyes and was just hypnotized by the blue. I had to write a poem using metaphor and color, and this is the result.
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Blue is the sign
that stops the bus
I take to work,
and it's fraying chair I sit in
as I look up into the sky,

and it is the sky,
that's been blue since the sun
stretched out his waking arms
this morning--
he seems to have stretched them to the stars
because they have faded to this
blueness

that's like your eyes,
only different--
for they're sky blue at the football games
but stone blue in the kitchen
where we eat
white rice
and sweet and sour chicken
dripping in red sauce.

But it's the same blue
that holds the world together--
it keeps the sun and moon up in the sky,
it is the last color to touch the stars.

It is also bravery:
As the ship droops head first,
and the oceans seethe below,
and the sky makes war above,
hammering down
light and fire
with the rain,
I stand, clinging to the bow,
and the lifeboat
below me
calls me down,
and it is blue
that helps me

jump.

Blue can be the coldest shard of ice
or the hottest tongue of fire,
but it can also be

the flower

that stands out in a field of green,
as if wearing a prom dress
was how it went to school every day.
And you could pick it
and put it in that blue vase
on the kitchen table,
or you could let it unfold
                  its blue petals
                                    out to the sky.

Blue is the color of love
when red has faded.
It is the horizon,
or the mountains on the horizon
whereupon reaching them
all you have proven
is that there is more blue beyond.