12 Musings on a Carolina Sky
The sky is marbled.
This means the morning
must not be wasted.
-
The sky reflects blue light
while the sun’s waistline
expands each year.
Following one billion revolutions,
the sky might glow like stadium lights
every day at noon.
-
The sky is an angry sponge.
It is in the mood
to drink water from my grass
and spit it back at me.
-
The sky is lavender
sometimes in February.
It reminds me
I’m a year older,
the sea a fingernail taller,
than the last time
it was lavender.
-
The sky is a pyromaniac.
My children rebuked sunscreen
until they saw mottled skin--
stitches and melanoma scars.
It was their Irish grandfather.
-
The sky tastes like metal,
I think it will snow.
With climate change,
each of these occasions is nostalgic.
-
The sky is kaleidoscopic.
In April, it shimmers yellow, yellow, yellow,
sends me backpedaling indoors
on an otherwise perfect day.
In November, later each autumn,
it scatters every shade
of brown on my lawn.
-
The sky lets stars in,
But the city does everything
in its power to keep them out.
-
The sky is a bully.
When it gets bored,
it blows my children’s toys
down the gas pipeline
or ravages my patio furniture.
-
The sky is hazy with soot.
It wafted in yesterday from California,
which is a five-hour flight away,
non-stop.
-
The sky is a blanket.
In January, it is threadbare.
In August, it is snakeskin,
a boa constrictor on a rampage,
wielding a sledgehammer.
-
The sky is a ruse.
Beyond it is an immeasurable black
with no rest areas in between.
This means the morning
must not be wasted.
-
The sky reflects blue light
while the sun’s waistline
expands each year.
Following one billion revolutions,
the sky might glow like stadium lights
every day at noon.
-
The sky is an angry sponge.
It is in the mood
to drink water from my grass
and spit it back at me.
-
The sky is lavender
sometimes in February.
It reminds me
I’m a year older,
the sea a fingernail taller,
than the last time
it was lavender.
-
The sky is a pyromaniac.
My children rebuked sunscreen
until they saw mottled skin--
stitches and melanoma scars.
It was their Irish grandfather.
-
The sky tastes like metal,
I think it will snow.
With climate change,
each of these occasions is nostalgic.
-
The sky is kaleidoscopic.
In April, it shimmers yellow, yellow, yellow,
sends me backpedaling indoors
on an otherwise perfect day.
In November, later each autumn,
it scatters every shade
of brown on my lawn.
-
The sky lets stars in,
But the city does everything
in its power to keep them out.
-
The sky is a bully.
When it gets bored,
it blows my children’s toys
down the gas pipeline
or ravages my patio furniture.
-
The sky is hazy with soot.
It wafted in yesterday from California,
which is a five-hour flight away,
non-stop.
-
The sky is a blanket.
In January, it is threadbare.
In August, it is snakeskin,
a boa constrictor on a rampage,
wielding a sledgehammer.
-
The sky is a ruse.
Beyond it is an immeasurable black
with no rest areas in between.
Lytton
On June 29, 2021 the village of Lytton, British Columbia set the Canadian national record high temperature of 121.3F. On June 30, the village was destroyed by wildfire.
Just shy of fifty centigrade one day,
gone the next, Lytton
is a village I’ve never been,
another casualty of chemistry,
a horseshoe buckle in the jet stream,
a story foretold on green screens.
Fraser Canyon set ablaze,
nine days after June’s solstice,
Ponderosa pines served as kindling
like a book of saloon matches.
An unwelcome, infernal parade
burst into town, consumed
the gold rush hamlet,
one-hundred-sixty-years old,
and all the family albums,
snapshots of better times,
and all the breakfast tables
where babies once fed,
and all the human skin
cradling the precious lives
too feeble to escape
in fifteen minutes.
I simmer in the steam bath air
of our own drowning South,
while char and summer smoke casts
an unnerving smog
over Piedmont’s horizon.
How many years before this season,
the one of fly-fishing weekends,
the one of campfire stories,
is lost in the melee of fretful days
broken only by the pale darkness of winter?
Lytton, I’ll never know you as you were,
but I’m breathing you in from afar
gone the next, Lytton
is a village I’ve never been,
another casualty of chemistry,
a horseshoe buckle in the jet stream,
a story foretold on green screens.
Fraser Canyon set ablaze,
nine days after June’s solstice,
Ponderosa pines served as kindling
like a book of saloon matches.
An unwelcome, infernal parade
burst into town, consumed
the gold rush hamlet,
one-hundred-sixty-years old,
and all the family albums,
snapshots of better times,
and all the breakfast tables
where babies once fed,
and all the human skin
cradling the precious lives
too feeble to escape
in fifteen minutes.
I simmer in the steam bath air
of our own drowning South,
while char and summer smoke casts
an unnerving smog
over Piedmont’s horizon.
How many years before this season,
the one of fly-fishing weekends,
the one of campfire stories,
is lost in the melee of fretful days
broken only by the pale darkness of winter?
Lytton, I’ll never know you as you were,
but I’m breathing you in from afar
Brian Tajlili is an actuary by day, poet by night, and father of two always. His current project is a chapbook about climate change’s impact in his home state of North Carolina and beyond. Brian is a human mutt with a gene pool mostly from countries beginning in I, loves running among trees, and was possibly a puma in a past life.