The Sky
Small wonder we placed God up in the sky,
Within its infinite and blue construed
Eternity and beauty on the fly
And in its midnight dark could scarce absorb
The mystery divine so archly strewed
Amid the seething sheath of star and orb.
It prompts a motion only humans feel:
A thing in us that tells us we should kneel.
For just as ocean’s surging swells and tides
Find fluid echo in our pulsing blood
(Our sad and sudden bursts of tears besides)
And autumn’s chill informs our aging bones,
The sky throughout our inner being floods
And there a strange beatitude enthrones:
We carry in our being something vast,
A deeper life whose life is unsurpassed.
Jeffrey Essmann is an essayist and poet living in New York. His poetry has appeared in numerous magazines and literary journals, among them Agape Review, America Magazine, Dappled Things, the St. Austin Review, U.S. Catholic, Grand Little Things, Heart of Flesh Literary Journal, and various venues of the Benedictine monastery with which he is an oblate. He is editor of the Catholic Poetry Room page on the Integrated Catholic Life website.
I love the way your poem begins with wondering about the universal human instinct to place God in the sky, then uses some imagery describing the sky (such as, “so archly strewed…”), and then goes on to expound upon one deep human instinct, that “thing in us that tells us we should kneel”. Then the second stanza continues by displaying the interplay between that “thing” and the way all of creation is put together — how we who are made in the Creator’s image echo, in the depths of our beings, different aspects of the way the whole creation is put together. (Or is it the other way around: everything in creation echoes something about us?) All of these insights lead to the concluding, profound couplet. This is beautiful!
The sky’s height is supraterrestrial and seemingly infinite. We carry in our being something similar; at the same time we gods beneath the sky feel impelled to kneel before it. It exhibits the complex yet distinct unreachability of both God and self.
There’s something almost mystical here about the way man’s physical and spiritual being mirrors creation and its Creator. That “thing in us that tells us we should kneel” at first sight seems a very loose description but, on reflection, it says all that can be said: it encompasses fear, awe, gratitude, adoration and an overwhelming awareness of out smallness. Another very worthy piece of work, Jeffrey: thank you.
Hi Jeffrey, Grammatically, I’m confused between lines three and four. Feels like there’s a transition that doesn’t quite work. If it does work and the confusion’s just on my end, I’d love a little grammatical explication. Otherwise, I love the phrasing and the ideas – “autumns chill informs” and “strange beatitude informs” – as if asking the professed agnostic or atheist (as well as those of us who have faith) to search their own hearts and see if in fact they don’t find that “underlying sense that they should kneel” pointing themselves to something higher. As it clearly does!
Hmm!? If only it were so. And where then should we place God, in the center of a navel orange? The ray of light you offer is unsubstantiated, and everything turns to jello.
That “thing in us that tells us we should kneel” at first sight seems a very loose description but, on reflection, it says all that can be said: it encompasses fear, awe, gratitude, adoration and an overwhelming awareness of out smallness. Another very worthy piece of work, Jeffrey: thank you