The sky is never merely sky

Nor only blue, nor simply overhead

It is the playground of the four winds

Clear, serene and endless

Piled with clouds of white

Stacked softly, white upon light

Strewn with shredded tissues

Pale and fragile sheets, torn by the wind

Stretched across the endless acres

Of rich cerulean silk

It is the celestial castle of long passed stars

Ghostly hauntings of the halls

And the corridors of midnight

Endless diurnal revolutions

Of the heavens overhead

Ceaseless alternation

From shining, silken songs

To cool, velvet nocturnes

It is the azure vault of heaven

And as the day is dawning

Or drawing to a close

The silken sky does shimmer

Tinged with rose and gold

The wispy vapours transformed

To an iridescent landscape

In shining, precious hues

It is the abode of the immortals

The glistening fabric of the day

Rolls ever gently over

To the open fields of evening

To the labyrinthine, purple prelude

Then the vastness of the night

A embroidered, obsidian blanket

Its pattern wrought with jewels

The sky is never merely sky

Nor only blue, nor simply overhead

© Ann Bagnall