Big Sky Gazing

Big sky opens wide,
white blue and bright,
shines through debris
from a former
much darker
now vaporized world.

The mist of once impassable mountains,
dust of once dank dungeons,
gasified once great
armored fortress walls
wearing barbed wire,
turrets and searchlights—
all as utterly gone now
as Christ’s own blood-soaked
crown of thorns.

This burnt offering rises
in that column of smoke
from far beyond a lost horizon
barely remembered
let alone seen
this far from shore.

A single ray of sunlight
slams through clouds,
fractures into rainbows.

Stained glass and wine
rains down on us all,
evaporates what rags and remnants
still may cling to skin
from earlier ages when
everyone was still
blind and sleeping.

We raise goblets,
hold them high
in noble silence
a whole still minute
of invulnerable peace
passing understanding
before we lower
brimming sacred chalices
to lips and drink.

This is my blood
that pulses in your veins,
your body purified
in my open lungs.

Breathing in,
we know we are being breathed in;
breathing out,
we know we are being breathed out.

Big sky opens wide,
white violet bright
blazes through
endless blue
in a much more transparent
ever-present incandescent world.