Lately, I can't stop looking at the sky.
Head turned up, as if to keep
my face out of water, my lungs
clear, my body working frantically below
the surface to stay up and out and living.
Blue sky. Gray sky. Snow sky, the clouds
a marbled yellow and pink and blue,
all resting low along the horizon, weighed down
and heavy with all they carry, like navel oranges,
substantial for their size, almost leaden
when rolled along a countertop, each sliced
open is its own sun, its own buoy against
the single-degree temperatures outside.
In the car or on my cold, clenched walks,
I struggle to keep my head down, my eyes
on the road ahead. They keep drifting—helium-filled,
heliotropic—to the sky, to stare bald-faced at that unreachable
atmosphere. Sunburst, skyburst, cloudburst, starburst.
Car horns, curb lip, and I'm pulled back
down, tug of a string, jerk of the neck, whiplash,
windswept, world-weary, world-worn,
world-won, this swirling mass. And skimming
Along the spine of it, that drifting sky.
