out of the blue
these giggles! tickle their way up about to —

across the kitchen table
we dip into the other’s stuff of life.
it is such a phenomenon.
the giggles want to celebrate
this phenomenon — pOP the cork!
effervescence rush up and lose
the tear i just
swallowed.

i give you to drink,
let me give you to drink, love boldly,
pour me out here –
are you under the influence?
drink generously, my friend, before we
evaporate.

will you forget?
will you forget?
will…you remember?

it’s okay,
as you ride
as you fight
the onward run of life, you will not
drown.
God promised.

and i am blue
champagne.

~ to every one of you whom
I will be leaving, someday.

===============

This is one of the last poems I’ve written, almost 20 years ago at University of Pennsylvania. My farewell to friends on the cusp of graduation. Blue Champagne was published in a campus literary arts magazine. I wanted to give you a glimpse of the writings from my 20s that I talked about in The Writing Process: Color, Part 1.  Only just now did I realize the poem is a literal sample of what colored my art back then.