Maggie Smith

Sky

Why is the sky so tall and over everything?

What you draw as a blue stripe high above
a green stripe, white-interrupted, the real sky
starts at the tip of each blade of grass and goes
up, up, as far as you can see. Our house stops
at the roof, at the glitter-black overlap of shingles
where the sky presses down, bearing the weight
of space, dark and sparkling, on its back.
Think of sky not as blue, not as over,
but as the invisible surround, a soft suit
you wear close to the skin. When you walk,
the soles of your feet take turns on the ground,
but the rest of you is in the sky, enveloped in sky.
As you move through it, you make a tunnel
in the precise size and shape of your body.

Author: Maggie Smith

Maggie Smith is the author of six books of poems and prose, including Goldenrod, Good Bones, and Keep Moving. Her poems and essays have appeared in the New York Times, The New Yorker, The Southern Review, the Guardian, the Paris Review, the Washington Post, and The Best American Poetry.

Plume: Issue #73 August 2017