Ocean of Heaven

Over rows and rows of cornfields, the June blue sky
roils with road dust through my rolled down window

as I drive north towards the Quad Cities,
towards that sky I’ll do anything not to miss.

And when I cross the Mississippi, towards the white
clouds I’ve longed to see, I imagine the ghosts

thwarted by the Big Muddy while I’m tonicked like
the snow that made everything dormant and clean.

And while I’m thankful for the icicles that decorated
my patio this winter, thankful for the wildflowers

and redbuds, the dogwoods and Bradford pears blooming
this spring, still I prefer my clouds of Iowa-June, far

from the dark cloud of southern Illinois hovering over me,
which after two years I can’t name, though I’ve seen it

in the bare branches, spiked like spindles of a gasolier
whose candles burn out yet reach up, sick for light.

---

Laura Sweeney facilitates Writers for Life in central Iowa. She represented the Iowa Arts Council at the First International Teaching Artist's Conference in Oslo, Norway. Her poems and prose appear in fifty-plus journals in the States, Canada, Britain, and China. Her recent awards include a residency at Sundress Publication's Firefly Farms, a scholarship to the Sewanee Writers' Conference, and participation in the Kaz Creative Nonfiction Conference. This winter she is reading for Water-Stone Review.