An Ode to the Sky

By Vic Jameson

When Frances and I were preparing
to move from the Southeast —
Georgia, Kentucky, North Carolina —
to New Mexico,
friends would frequently ask,
“Why?”
I would reply “For the climate’’ or
“for the altitude” or “for kinfolk”
or such.
But I soon realized that none of those
was enough.
So I began to say simply
“for the sky.’’
And, I think they understood.

Were it left to me,
I would not describe the sky
as astronomers do;
there are aplenty of those
to tell that it is composed
of nitrogen and hydrogen ,
mostly, and tiny water droplets
and ice crystals in the form of clouds.

It is necessary that we have those things,
all right, and in the right proportions;
but for now
let them be.

Instead I would speak
of three other things
not mentioned in chemists’ notes
or laboratory lectures.
Instead I would speak
of things vital to
our invisible lives:
Three parts faith,
and two parts hope,
and four parts wonder.

So herewith
a small assortment
of quotes, comments,
and daydreams
perhaps suitable
for the celebrating
of that part of God’s creation
we call
the sky.

=====

Ross Calvin, who ventured to New Mexico
for his health and stayed
thirty-some years,
wrote a book about it:
Sky Determines.
In it he says:

“To comprehend the arid and
beautifully strange land
of desert, mesa and mountain,
one begins by studying its sky.
Source of intense heat and frugal
moisture, sky determines climate
and climate determines flora, fauna,
and the general aspect of the country.
The sky has long before the dawn of history,
exercised compelling potency in shaping
the destiny of the human inhabitants.”

Describing New Mexico skies, Novelist
Willa Cather wrote: “Elsewhere the sky
is the roof of the world, but here the
earth was the floor of the sky. The
landscape one longed for when one was
far away, the thing all about one, the
world one actually lived in, was the sky,
the sky!”

In a book called The Floor of the Sky,
Charles C. Eldredge wrote of “the
enormous sky overhead” and artist
Georgia O’Keeffe’s love for it: “I
walked out past the last house, past the
last locust tree, and sat on a fence a long
time--looking at the lightning -- you see,
there was nothing but sky and flat prairie . . . .”

“If you ever go to New Mexico,” she
would declare later, “It will itch you the
rest of your life.”

Anne Bateman Noss, who knows a lot
about spirit and spirituality, could live
anywhere but chooses to live in the sky
country. “It (the sky) is always
changing. It has dramatic moments and
serene moments. And it has an effect on
us. Four days of cloudy weather, and
we get grumpy.”

And my son Michael, after an
afternoon’s discussion on the subject,
summed it up in ten words: “I think the
sky has something to do with infinity.”