(Poem): blue-eyed sky

1/05/2024 by Alex Sitze

My gaze scrapes the blue-gray skyline
Over scores of peaks and bumps of shadow

A reservoir peeks out like an alien-Lump, a stumpy kind of ship
Sitting adrift there on the shore of the broken skyline

A bird glides around the blue-eyed sky,
Though not on pinions alone…
See how the bird sings the wind into its sails
And how its wings swing gracefully instead
Guided by vision rather than sight
Setting out above the land
Dropping stems and seeds
That sow the spring
And reap the winter
Of all the grief and sonder
That had set in snowfalls
Yet to come undone
Under many unseen suns

Oh, and stars were the seeds.
Now don’t you see?

The world would not spin without the wind;
It’s as if the wind winds the world
Twirling it like a soft-serve ice cream machine
A spiral off the sweet cold loom
One turn at a time
Needle to thread
No one to whine.

We flew in your car
From the train dreams
And radio-talk of the hour
Bittersweet, turned sour
Rattling our rib cages with
Laughter
Shared for fear of vanity and
Kept sharp by shine of the moon

Once again, the blue-eyed sky revolves
To expose the lead-bare night and
Exchange the lampost for the dayglow
But all I want to know is: how can the day glow so bright?
That beam that burns with countless photons
That illuminates and at the same time, illustrates
What a pouring of pure particles
Could do (with a little more sensitivity)
And a little less, “what can I do with this,”
And more, “what the hell does that have to do with me?”
My question is still, “what is this goddamn jazz that brings the day into light”?

Yes, the wind winds the world
Just as poems winch the word
Into droplets of reflection
For peering into metaphors,
Like that blue-eyed sky I mentioned
A bargain inspired
Between verse and throng—
That which receives is also that which gives—
The content does not matter
It is the way it’s perceived
With or without apostrophe.
And since this poem’s just for me
Then it is surely pure conceit!

So find me where the balancing act meets
At the corner of the market and the street
For SHOUTING OUT LOUD
It’s the public license for sharing private silence
To a community and for the dearth
As some great mercy of sympathy
Spoken as if it were a joke,
And maybe it is,
As I am
Spitting wonders at the air
Professing these pretensions
Spouting them out like a better
Who’d be better off on a dare.