Why do you stand looking up at the skies? (Kathleen Norris)

 Why do you stand           

 looking up at the skies?          

Acts 1:11          

 It wasn’t just wind, chasing  

thin gunmetal clouds  

across the loud sky;  

it wasn’t the feeling that one might ascend 

on that excited air, 

rising like a trumpet note. 

                          

And it wasn’t just my sister’s water breaking, 

her crying out, 

the downward draw of blood and bone… 

                       

It was all of that, 

the mud and the new grass 

pushing up through melting snow, 

the lilac in bud 

by my front door, bent low 

by last week’s storm. 

                       

Now the new mother, that leaky vessel, 

begins to nurse her child, 

beginning the long good-bye. 

--Kathleen Norris, Ascension         

Image source

Poem source