Bluest Sky

“by meer playing go to heaven”

~Henry Vaughan

We played beside Canaveral’s shore, the two

Of us, he strong and beautiful as men

Can be, and me a silly boy, a stretch

Too far that sunshine afternoon, and then

We strained to life beyond the gilded sand

And white gold wave.  He stretched to marriage three

Or four times, clarified by pain and bland

Unhappiness, at loss to find the grand

Design of living as the younger one

Grasped hard again, again, three thousand times

But couldn’t hold it as that noontime sun

Turned off its light against his urgent crimes.

They neither one became Clark Kent, no guy

With flapping cape across love’s truest sky.

May 7, 2026