Unraveled

If the sky were any prettier it would kill me. My incapacity to process it would overwhelm and cripple. The sun colors the sky best just before it breaks the horizon. It turns each wisp of cloud into a trailing kite. It enhances the tree in the fence row clinging to its last wind-torn leaf. It’s bigger than a barn from afar, this tree, and I don’t even know its name. Bigger than the tool shed and the barn put together. How come I’ve never stood underneath that tree with the birds’ nests unraveling in the wind? I’m too lazy. I haven’t walked through an adjacent field to stand under a tree bigger than a barn and older than the farm. My capacity to feel small is undiminished in the light of day. As the sun travels its low arc across the southern sky, I finish out the day in a multitude of smallish ways.