The Firmament

Originally published in print in the Spring 2017 issue of Wheaton College’s Rushlight Literary Magazine

When a thick fog came rolling

in the aeronauts would take strings

of wet dew from the grass

to tie in knots onto clouds

and go sailing in cumulus balloons.

From up there, they would traverse

and explore the landscape, or skyscape; 

whatever you wanted to call prairies of heaven.

There, mountains were covered in snow 

that had not yet fallen. Mist fed 

the canyons a stream of vapor dripping

into watering holes where bison, 

feathery and still squawking, hardly evolved 

enough, would gather in flocks and herds.

The aeronauts would hunt them

until the days dusky end.

From pine tree forests of suspended hail, 

and foliage of sleet, small rodents went burrowing 

deep into soft puffs of ground. Colors turned pink and purple

as they tunneled through layers of sediment, 

cirrus normally preserved for sunset. 

Bears shook off strains of hibernation,

designed with nitrogen bones, CO2  flesh, and ozone fur.

Heat lightning branched out in a thousand directions

growing a swamp of summer static in the currents of wind. 

At night explorers set up stratus tents listening 

to chirps echoing out into altitude and moonlight 

as it laced lunar lakes into the countryside.

But as sun and dry seasons arrived

their safari on the billowing 

atmosphere would come to its finale.

They would settle upon the land lighting up

farms in candles, green-gold of aurora borealis,

building arcs of rainbow over brooks to reach harvests 

of aero-grains. In a lightning flash the land was altered, 

eroded, and crushed by waves of spring air. Explorers scattered 

as oceans of frightened birds would explode onto the land.

Subterranean quakes shook the palace of precipitation.

Storms raged and kicked up wet dust.

The world would fall away, trickle onto foothills.

Plateaus tumbled down like melting glaciers.

Animals scurried into hazy caves only 

to be washed away, like paint,

 vanished in the growing void of blue. 

The Aeronauts would come down

in nimbus parachutes and return 

to a drenched masterpiece.

A new place to explore that bloomed 

green, fresh, and mud-luscious,

puffing up to form a landscape

whose outline would be singed into the wet 

soil as water evaporated back

upward, retaining a memory of a rocky outline

and building it above, weaving the first threads 

of condensation. A new domain gathered overhead,

preparing for the year to come, when yarns of dew 

would signal a time to voyage  

out toward frontiers of sky once again.