Sky Communion

Last night the sky was a child
coughing into a blanket, drawing
itself from a pale aurora jabbed
with another storm on the sun,
as if it’s got a circle of old friends
jumping tombstones. There might
have been a tribe of younger stars
dropping empty green rose-stems
through our curtains. Except last
night the child slipped its ghost
and stretched the sunrise against
the river trees. There might have
been some other stars stringing all
the raucous jaybirds up into heaven.
It was still winter perhaps. And pearly 
gates danced like ionized particles,
the science of it all holding a child
where the hospital woke.

Clyde Kessler lives in Radford, Virginia with his wife Kendall and their son Alan. This year, poems have been published in Mad Swirl, Book of Matches, Spinoza Blue, and Literary Nest.