when i was walking

yesterday the sky was dodger blue,

an electric, hardly nature-made hue,

purple on the edges,

creamsicle orange in the direction i was headed,

and the bats weren’t out yet, nor the owls,

just my neck

craned ‘round and back, like an owl’s,

to drink the sky’s moment.

.

i thought about grammy, how she’d have

spent all the next afternoon

mixing up acrylics to match it,

and i thought about you—

all the skies i’ll see that you won’t see,

all the skies you’ll see that i won’t see

your desert sky, so dry it’s see-thru at night

and how many nights you'll be up late,

staring right on thru to the round, dark shadow

behind a bright crescent moon

while I’m asleep, somewhere.

.

and will you secretly share

that and other skies

with the ghosts of me you carry,

too?

.

looking backwards, moving anyway,

“it’s so fucking blue,”

i said to the concrete path,

the empty bench,

the white ibis on the far edge of the pond,

the side-by-side houses

with their friendly yellow lights on.