ABOVE YOU, the sky is a vast blue wonder, something held tight in the chest and then released to rush like the breath of a god, quickening the grasslands into stark, bewildering beauty. The sky is skinless yet animate, strangely expectant. It is waiting for something to happen. Some days anvil-shaped clouds ride the horizon—lightning leaps from field to field, spears through a window, splits a tree, blows off the hooves of cattle near the dugout. You see it long before you hear a sound. When at last the thunder booms, it drums the ground and the mirrors in the houses tremble.
Calm or restless, the sky follows your every step. It touches you with loneliness. It humbles your tongue. Nothing is taller, more open. It makes you fall in love with weather, with nimbus and feather and hollow bone. Under its blue gaze, you mark the smallest thing: a lichen scab on stone, thin legs of a crab spider on the petal of a rose, a snowdrift on the beak of a chickadee. Though you lower your head, your prayers go upwards. Imagine all the praise and fear and doubt the sky must hold.