Skies

by Alethea Eason


I never knew skies the way I do now,
how they breathe down to the horizon
with continents of clouds.

Winter is outlined by crooked bare limbs,
cerulean nakedness punctuated by trees,
branches like neurolines searching for lines of poetry.

Bracing cold.
Rooster crowing.
Traffic humming.
The singlewides braced on crates,
the desperate fields of weeds,
the splatter of glass on the trail
that leads to the ridge above my house.

My neighbor's chihuahuas irritate the night.
I do not sleep. The sirens fly down the street.
The ravens have stayed for winter.
Their cawing the only songs
on lawns white as powdered sugar.

Is the sky more yellow or pink?
It hangs low. Snow threatens but does not fall.
There's a shrine in the neighborhood.
I imagine Mary shivering.

I never knew how to bear winter the way I do now.
My body, a continent of clouds.
How it breathes the early morning light,
the sky—poetry, the earth—a dream.


* * * * *

Alethea Eason's poetry has appeared in El Palacio, New Mexico Poetry Anthology, The
Ekphrastic Review, and the book Vision and Verse, published by the Redwood Writer's
Club. She has written four novels, Charlotte and the Demons being the latest. She lives
near a volcano with her husband, a dog and a cat.