Blue is my hue.
Sapphire, cobalt, cerulean, slate, cornflower, robin’s egg, navy, the near-black blue of midnight. . . .I gravitate to all of them.
“I even hear the mountains
the way they laugh
up and down their blue sides
and down in the water
the fish cry
and the water
is their tears. “
I wear a sapphire ring people likely assume is my wedding or engagement ring. It’s not: it’s one of three very special pieces of jewelry–two of them starring the color blue–Jim gave me during our many married years.
One crystalline blue oval gemstone, the color of our son-to-be Noah’s eyes, is set into a silver bracelet I’ve had since that first Mother’s Day when we had a child of our own to hold. A dark sapphire is set into a three-stone tenth anniversary ring that marked the arrival of three children in the preceding four years. (The third is a necklace that sparkles ethereally in every color, and that Jim gave me for the “birthday of significance” he knew he would not live to celebrate.)
“Why make so much of fragmentary blue
In here and there a bird, or butterfly,
Or flower, or wearing-stone, or open eye,
When heaven presents in sheets the solid hue?
Since earth is earth, perhaps, not heaven (as yet)–
Though some savants make earth include the sky;
And blue so far above us comes so high,
It only gives our wish for blue a whet. “
Every day I seek out some hope of a heaven in blue, in skies and oceans full of life. I watch birds cross and re-cross that chasm between the earth and sky. From my backyard I’ve seen blue angels wing their way on the same seamless cyclical journeys.
And nearly every day I also feel the universal wash of grief’s figurative blues, shards from the abyss; sometimes I am hopelessly tangled in these blues, and on some days I can look up and away from midnight.
The only thing I knew how to do
Was to keep on keeping on like a bird that flew
Tangled up in blue.
Love in the Spaces 
These are very beautiful shots with all kinds of shades of blue!
Thank you, Belle! I was just out catching an enormous orange moon reflected in a midnight blue ocean. I’m not sure I’ll ever be satisfied that I have “enough” blues….
i like blue 🙂
Very beautiful, poetic, honest post. Thank you, Stephanie!
Blue is also my color! love it!
Beautiful. I love your first image.
The flower is an absolutely gorgeous picture!
Your “About” is both touching and bittersweet.
And blue is my favorite color so all combined, I’m very appreciative of you. 🙂
Oh, I love blue too! Lovely! I wrote about it too sometime ago. Glad I found a kindred spirit.
Beautifully written Stephanie, full of tenderness, and blue is such a wonderful colour….soothing and releasing us into its infinite depths 🙂
What beautiful hues of blue!
A friend of mine recently lost his father very suddenly. It happened a couple months ago, but I can recognize that look on his face when I see him in meetings. It is a familiar look of shock, and grief. It is amazing to see your resiliency take hold as time goes on. I don’t have the heart to tell my friend that grief lasts a lifetime, it just changes shades over time.
Beautiful blues, beautiful words.
Blue, especially the rich blue of your photos, is one of my favorite colors, too. I especially like the first photo of the flower and the fragility of the petals.
janet
Lovely! And thanks for visiting Eyes to Heart. … BTW since you like gemstones and the colour blue I suggest you look out for a piece of Labradorite. (http://crystal-cure.com/labradorite.html) This is my favourite semi-precious stone. On the surface it looks grey but twist it in the light and it shimmers blue, indigo, green … all the shades you see in my post. I suspect you would find this stone intriguing. I have a vast collection. Every stone is different. It’s beauty fills me with wonder. Besides turquoise I call it my “signature” stone.