Where blue becomes infinite

At dusk, the sky begins in pale blue—
the color of glass held up
to the last light,
then slowly becomes cornflower,
cerulean,
a little more
impossible with every passing minute.

The trees stand beneath it,
quiet and green-black,
their branches combing
the evening air
as though they could smooth
the wrinkles from the sky.

Above them,
blue turns indigo.
Indigo turns cobalt.

And somewhere between
one shade and the next,
the first star appears—
small, silver,
almost shy—
as if the heavens
have begun
to remember themselves.

More stars arrive.
They scatter through the blue
like handfuls of light
tossed into deep water,
and I wonder
if this is what dreaming is:

to keep falling
without ever reaching
the bottom.

The horizon is still turquoise,
fading into sapphire,
while overhead
the blue grows darker,

midnight blue,
the kind that seems
to have no edge,
no ceiling, no end.
The trees lift their branches
into it,
and for a moment
they look
like they are reaching for the stars.

Perhaps they are.
I lie beneath the branches
and watch the colors change—
azure into violet-blue,
sapphire into midnight,
midnight into something
deeper than a name.

The stars keep shining.
The trees keep dreaming.
And the sky keeps opening,
blue after blue

after blue,
until there is nowhere left
for the heart to go
but upward,
and upward, and upward,
into the place
where blue becomes infinite.

Photo credits: Azul’s Drawings/Paintings

Posted for Poetics: Introducing an Eight-Year-Old Artist @dVerse Pub