A Sky That is Hard to Live Up To

One of the mornings that Carl was working nearby in the field, I walked on the little road out to the center of our square-mile section. High clouds were moving fast from west to east and the sky above them was the summer's blue. I realized that we live between land and sky, on the frontier between two great countries. 

I had forgotten how sky is as much a country to live in as land. From the west were rolling pile after pile of fat, white, complicated clouds, and above the clouds was the clear and uncomplicated blue. I thought of blue, white, and gold rococo ceilings, and I had to look down, away from all that motion and grandeur. 

This sky was hard to live up to. It brought me messages from other times and places and made me lonely. I was as confused on that flat land under all that sky as any stranger would be, and my limbs ached from all this local wanting and getting. Image after image of the clouds as cities, as ceilings, ghosts, pasts, and saints rolled over me, as did the clouds themselves. I had to sit down on the dirt and watch the ants at their mining. 

from Chapter 6 of  A Farm Under a Lake, by Martha Bergland.