The Ceiling
It is one sixty-fourth of a chessboard that isn’t there.
I am the king of the white square the size of a room.
It is a sky without birds, except for the ones I remember.
It is a sky without clouds, except for the ones I remember.
It is the skeleton of the sky.
It is the ice cap at the arctic attic of the house.
It is the screen on which movies are played.
These are the movies that star all the family dead.
It is the white satin lining of the coffin lid.
This is the lid that closes every night upon our lids.
It is the last sky most of us will ever see.
Darkly will we see it through a painless fog.
It is the polar route to paradise.
It is the headroom of hell.
About the Author: Nominated for the National Book Award, the Eric Hoffer Book Award, and nominated three times for the Pulitzer Prize, J.R. Solonche is the author of more than 40 books of poetry and coauthor of another. He lives in the Hudson Valley.
Image Credit: Andrea Pozzo “An horizontal projection of architecture in a square ceiling” (1707) Public domain image courtesy of Artvee
As It Ought To Be 