A Hole in the Sky

I'll admit it: I am spoiled. The warmth of this September has lulled my winter warning system to sleep, with promises of warm and colorful days, followed by cool and comfortable nights. Open windows have permitted sleep with the whisper of mid-summer's blessings in harmony with the first harvest songs of summer's end. Bright, sunny days tell tall tales of long warm nights that now linger only in memory and seem to promise abundance they cannot deliver.

Twilight shadows come to visit earlier each evening, but carry only cool winds and billions of brilliant stars. That was the dream, drowned in the gray dampness of the first true fall morn, the shadowy billows of moisture laden clouds adrift upon a river of Canadian air. The low gray brows of the scowling sky frown down upon my up-raised eye, and a tiny prayer escapes upon a whispered cry...Lord, let the sun shine through a hole in the sky...

Mick

A Hole in the Sky

On a dreary Sunday, cold-pizza dawn,
An iron gray sunrise slaps the window,
Makes steely mud of the dew on the lawn,
And drives the rain like a wind-blown shadow;
To pierce window pane, and chill my old heart
With darkling thoughts of old man winter's song.
Though Autumn's paintbrush has had a fair start,
The icy-blue rain light makes it look wrong.
The air feels heavy as chilled, soggy sand,
Or cold, wet laundry piled high on my chest —
This is not the morning that I had planned:
The warm, sunny start to my day of rest.
Lord, please warm my heart and brighten my eye,
Let the sun shine through a hole in the sky!

Mick McKellar
September 2009