Did You See the Sky?
Rachel Jamison Webster
Did you see the sky through me
tonight, carbon blues and clouds like ropes
of wool behind a fringe of branches,
great combs of black stilling in their sap,
stiffening with winter. I like to imagine
love can pull your essence like red thread
through the cold needle of my life now
without you. I was just driving home
from the grocery store and looking up
over the roofs, I remembered when
I was overthrowing all my thoughts
for doubts and you said, I know how to love you
because I hitchhiked, and it was never the same sky twice.
Now, I hear you say, this music is like wind
moving through itself to wind, intricate
as the chimes of light splintering into
everything while glowing only more whole.
It is nothing like those dusty chords
on your radio, each an ego
of forced air, heavy with the smells
of onions, mushrooms, sage and loam.
Drink it in, you say, those corded clouds
and throaty vocals. You will miss all this
when you become the changing.
About this poem
“I wrote this poem in the months of grief after my partner died. I often wondered if he could see or experience the world through me somehow, and what he would say from his new vantage point.”
– Rachel Jamison Webster
About Rachel Jamison Webster
Rachel Jamison Webster is the author of “September” (TriQuarterly Books, 2013). She is the acting director of the creative writing program at Northwestern University and lives in Evanston, Ill.
The Academy of American Poets is a nonprofit, mission-driven organization, whose aim is to make poetry available to a wider audience. Email The Academy at poem-a-day@poets.org.
(c) 2015 Rachel Jamison Webster. Originally published by the Academy of American Poets, www.poets.org. Distributed by King Features Syndicate.
