Clear - Oct 17 2023

 

Clear

Oct 17 2023

Not a cloud.

If I said sky-blue

you'd know exactly what I meant.

Not navy, sapphire, azure

cobalt or aqua,

cerulean, robin's egg

indigo or denim.

Just sky

as nature intended;

unweathered,

stripped to its essence,

and called what it is.

A white contrail appears,

a precisely ruled line

that's slowly lengthening.

Sound

doesn't travel this far,

and the invisible plane

draws on a perfectly blank page,

like an imperious god

whose hand

commands the heavens.

A flaw in perfection.

Like a porcelain vase

that still holds water,

despite the small crack

you hardly notice

on its Wedgwood-blue glaze.

Less is always more: the one that are short, and the narrower the focus — poems of microcosm and close observation — are almost always my favourites.

Big ideas, on the other hand, are best given to prose.

And the more space and less said the better.