Skyline
the moving domes
of umbrellas
Poems on the topic: sky
Poems on the topic “sky” on Poets.by.
The Hollow (3)
glossy orange
to mark the hatchet-cut scars
property line
beyond the line trees
the same old view
chestnut oak seedling
“leave no trace”
only my footprints now
where spring beauties bloomed
black locust grove
the leaf miners have laid bare
a rich vein of sky
* * *
Waziristani
children fear a clear blue sky,
the buzzing of bees
Risen
The sun slips over
the gray pelt of a vole zipping
from one hole to another
and catches on a distant gleam
of frost-heaved flotsam,
luring me to go look.
A beer bottle at the base of a tree
rests in a cradle of leaves,
bluer than the sky.
Winter sky, age 5
The sky lacked
the thinnest
whisker of cloud.
Jets untethered by contrails
hardly seemed to roar,
lost in all that blue.
This was the sky I labored at
with crayons,
having given up on the sun.
How to tell the woodpeckers
If it calls often,
it’s a hairy woodpecker,
less often: a downy,
never: an ivory-billed.
Each year the ground grows simpler
and the sky more complex.
Right over there,
in a hollow locust tree,
a hive of wild bees used to sleep.
Gospel
Five below zero.
The stream bank is garlanded
with flowers of frost.
The dogmatic drone
of a single-prop plane,
its cross-shaped silhouette.
The sky is blue as a bruise.
My lungs ache
just from trying to breathe.
Nocturne
December night. Meteors streak
through the bare crowns of oaks.
I watch the sky as if it were the sleeping face of a dreamer.
All that blazing action without a sound!
And the longer I look, the more unfamiliar it becomes,
wholly itself & yet possessed. Wild. Vulnerable.
I want to be present the way an oak is present
& stretch empty arms into the void.
Paraskevidekatriaphobia
In the first documented reference
to Friday the 13th, it is already
described as an ancient superstition,
but the ancients had much more
complex methods for detecting
an inauspicious day. They might’ve noticed
for example how those three crows
skimmed low & landed in the field
to reunite with their shadows.
They might’ve seen the wild
columbine next to the sidewalk
thrusting its red lanterns where
they don’t belong. Our ancestors preferred
hot jets of revelation to the patient
& dispassionate sifting of evidence
and you & I are the eventual result,
Over the Hills
Dear Todd,
I was taking the broom for a slow shuffle
around the dining room when I heard
the fluting of wild swans & rushed out,
scanning the sky till I spotted the long wedge
high above the hollow, heading north.
They were as dark against the sky
as we must be to them against the ground,
pausing in our Sunday labors, mouths open
as the swans pass over the train tracks
& the river, over the interstate & the quarry’s
enormous silent megaphone,
over a cardinal singing in a barberry hedge,
over junker cars & houses sheathed
in fading asphalt shingles,
over old carpets left out in the yard
Sensei
My teacher resembles a flightless bird:
the sky, to him, is an open book
written in a foreign tongue,
his enormous eyes are no bigger
than his three stomachs & when
he sticks his head in the sand, it isn’t
to evade the truth but to remember it
by being alone with his terrors.
Night
It was a beautiful summer night
That lead me down to the rivers edge
To test the temperature of the water
It told me stories with it's flowing noise
That seemed to comfort my beating heart
Tranquil was the surface that spoke to my soul
Reflecting the stars in it's smooth surface
I thought for a moment I could rest in peace
In the gaze of the sky watching over me
A moment so brief that it could have just been a shadow
I thought for a moment that I could have just blinked
The amazing beauty held before my very eyes
Even with it dark it was still such a sight
The color as dark as an ink is black
All void of nothingness but beautiful even still
Describe a feeling — we’ll find a poem
Or try: