A Language of the Sky

As clouds pass on their way,
the green, in stillness, holds
the whispered word of all that grows —
a silent language of the sky.
A voice of common wonder,
willing Time itself to slow —
the long-day love and kinship of the grove.

Time: that arrow starward,
its passage marked and known
in steadfast root and tower grown —
a living pillar of the sky.
Ever reaching toward its end
until its final autumn flies —
gives up its wooden ghost and falls, to die.

In the footprint of a giant,
a seed unfurls to life,
reaching for its patch of light —
the cold, blue freedom of the sky.
And it wonders, like a child,
in the stillness, in the green —
if a cloud is just the spirit of a tree.

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“A Language of the Sky” was written as the text of a choral work of the same name, commissioned by Northeastern University Madrigal Singers and their director, Elijah Botkin, for their tenth season.