Nearer the Sky

We used to live next to a respite, set nearer the sky. My mother told me they who pass through spent days or nights there, sometimes months; it was necessary to not see their troubles. Winters froze the edges, suns sank, and rose, gold-dust pink seam radial to warm the heavens. In summers we were cloaked in flour soft green. When the spectral trees' branches part, we see them- a figure or two resting- red embers of a cigarette zigzagging, a thrust into the air when a point is made. The lights of distant blue hills shine. Anguish simmers, as seductive as the eye of a hurricane.. a squirrel's claws click on the bark of a lush maple, and a wet pavement reflects the light of skies, and palpitations don't stop a morning jog.