Ever since I’ve been a child
I thought the old dead painters
painted the sky.

Coffee cream on Nursery wall blue
stretched out like souls on a
recently ***** dinnerplate.
No planes cutting between them
up there because I’m still watching
from the middle of the green where I lived.

An older version of myself
-in an attempt to dazzle-
while describing an evening sky
might have written “chiaroscuro”
…but for now I’ll stick with “skidding”
as an allusion to the colours I’m seeing
that mark the surface of the clouds
“Like paintings in a museum.”

The way they’re “so far up but floating even farther away.”

Serious and untouchable and content
the keepers of dreams
adrift in the biggest sea of all
which is the sky.

-Westley Barnes.