Never Merely Sky
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
The sky is never merely sky
Nor only black
Nor simply overhead
It is the celestial castle of long passed stars
Ghostly hauntings of the halls
And of the corridors of midnight
Endless diurnal revolutions
Of the heavens overhead
Ceaseless alternation
From shining, silken songs
To cool, velvet nocturnes
The sky is never merely sky
Nor only blue
Nor simply overhead
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
The sky is never merely sky
Nor only black
Nor simply overhead
It is the abode of the immortals
As 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
The embroidered, obsidian blanket
Its’ pattern wrought with jewels
The sky is never merely sky
Nor only blue, nor simply overhead
© Ann Bagnall 2014.
