As children we have all drawn the sky. We have painted the top half of a page blue and the bottom half green and in between we have squeezed people, or buildings, or things, or everything! Some days we forget the sky is there, at times reminded only by the amazing colors of a sunrise or a sunset. The poet Maggie Smith, from Columbus Ohio has written more than 6 books of poems and in her book Good Bones which was published in 2017 she has several poems which attempt to answer questions her children ask. The question, Why is the sky so tall and over everything? prompts the poem Sky. Take your time as you read it. I do not wish to say any more in case I spoil it -every line is precious and worth savoring. As always, pause and ponder. What is your favorite line? Why?
Sky
Why is the sky so tall and over everything?
What you draw as a blue stripe high above
a green stripe, white-interrupted, the real sky
starts at the tip of each blade of grass and goes
up, up, as far as you can see. Our house stops
at the roof, at the glitter-black overlap of shingles
where the sky presses down, bearing the weight
of space, dark and sparkling, on its back.
Think of sky not as blue, not as over,
but as the invisible surround, a soft suit
you wear close to the skin. When you walk,
the soles of your feet take turns on the ground,
but the rest of you is in the sky, enveloped in sky.
As you move through it, you make a tunnel
in the precise size and shape of your body. Maggie Smith
Prayer:
Lord God,
thank you for painting the sky blue
and the grass green. Thank you
for yellow daffodils, and red roses.
Thank you for ginger cats, black dogs
and white horses.
Thank you for the wonder of our every day.
Help us to look up and to notice even
though the chaos and the fear of the
world causes us to look down and to close
our eyes.
May you, O God of Hope and God of Love,
help me to see the sky and to know that
as it starts from the tip of each blade of grass
so your love and hope begins there too. Amen.
Prayers, Poems, and Christian Ponderings 
When my husband and I take a leisurely drive in the rural areas nearby we often describe the day as a child’s drawing. Blue and green, clearly delineated. On overcast days we say there is no sky, meaning no color. The sky can indeed begin on the tip of a blade of grass or at the crest of a high hill at the point when it seems we might be driving off a cliff.
The sky holds many mysteries for a child and I like how the poem addresses the universal question of children, asked by myself to my own parents as “where does the sky stop?” I chuckle at my own sky confusion recalling that I did not believe the adults who explained to me that the moon was big, because many nights I would stand at my window, arm extended, measuring the moon between my thumb and index finger, proving that the moon was about one inch across.
I love the final line of the poem and the notion of creating the perfect tunnel, always my own, unique to myself.
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