A Sky Too Small

The shadow limps on ahead of me,
sun warming my back,
as I walk up to the high point
in the middle of the open field;
she’s asleep in bed, dreaming
of shedding all her ragged clothes
as she walks back into the garden.
The soybean is just about calf-high,
and there’s a dead tree in the front yard
of the abandoned white house
at the end of the road. A young couple
has been spending weekends there,
cleaning it up, hauling out black bags
of trash. Last weekend they began
painting it a bright Tibetan blue,
the color of the endless sky —
a sky too small to hold all the love
we’ve found in our oft-broken hearts.
I’m glad those kids haven’t chainsawed
that old tree yet. Maybe they’ll wait.
Maybe, it’ll bloom again next spring.

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