Author Bret Hoveskeland

Another poem from the vault, written in spring of 2017, shortly before Nala was born.

“Cities of the Sky”

Some days the cities of the sky
look like small islands or rocks in a riverbed.
The water rushes past to meet new places and people.  

Some days, they stretch on
into a disappearing horizon,
with an older sun passing

and a new one rising.
They sit in the mist,
distant ghost kingdoms,

fading from sight
like a car speeding to its crash.
Blurred as the words and syllables

of an unfamiliar language
in our ears.
And maybe we are burrowed animals

living underneath these countries of clouds.
The farms spread in endless drifts
of silver and white smoke,

farther than the forests
of our younger days.
Maybe these dirt roads are nothing

more than lonely subways
traveling to a city in the sky.
Our own homes nothing

more than underground towns
and new Atlantises, one day 
to be discovered

by those left behind
to pick up the trail’s breadcrumbs.
As those who move on,

plumb the depths
of their increasing altitude
in cool air and cotton carpet.

With feet as light as light itself.
Never again promised or anchored
to the silence of the soil.