Sky Heavy

poeta fui, e cantai 

Cat’s-eye agate, this sky between rains—

It has a style too high for poets,

Too low for astronauts, and just right

For contrail-tracing passenger jets,

Ubiquitous, not quite iconic,

Too common to call nostalgic yet.

I have been a passenger. Mostly,

I just watch from down by the wayside,

In the haze of a data-crazed age,

Seeking calm and, counting, not counting,

Weaving long lines threaded with numbers,

This shuttle that balances my days.

Incredible what we’ve kept aloft—

Thousands of years of commentaries,

Impossible beliefs birthed as faiths,

Narratives floating like spiderlings,

Gossamer parachutes on the breeze,

Engorged heavier-than-air machines,

Vast bellies swelled with people or bombs,

Cargo or sensory equipment 

Made for collecting information

From the atmosphere, the way baleen

Gathers krill and plankton from the sea.

I say we. These carbon pods seeding

Bare skies with human technologies

Have not burst into flower thanks to me.

This atmosphere, gravidly empty,

Can sustain, ignore, or condemn me

Who is not a cause but consequence

Of things, one branch of a tree that sings.