SKY

Imagine a snow dome, you're inside it,
and it’s not glass. It is the sky
so blue that it’s the distillation
of cerulean, peacock, saxe and azure
and every blue on the palette
of that watercolour set you had at school.
 
It reaches up on tiptoes over you;
the highest and roundest of domes.
There are no flakes of snow, but wisps
of lazy smoke, and drifts of blossom,
chaffinch pink of cherry, wedding dress
of apple, tender, piercing green that hurts
your eyes, and snail trails crawled
by passing jets.
 
A perfect hemisphere above fractured moments
of imperfection and misunderstanding.
Over-arching, overlooking, over everything.
Summer sky.


Johnstone is a part-time teacher of modern languages. Her poems have appeared online at  www.poetryscotland.co.uk (Open Mouse) and in print in Iota and Sentinel Poetry Quarterly. She was shortlisted in the annual Cherrybite Poetry Competition and has had work accepted by Quantum Leap Magazine. She lives north of London.

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