Retreat by Niall O'Connor

Emptied of its summer weight, 

the winter sky’s a canvas

for all who want to wish and stare,

no longer oppressed,

by summer’s glare. 

The winter sky is not empty.

It is filled with an air

that is razor thin,

lighthearted and distracted,

graced by low and absentminded

sun, that lifts our study from earth to sky,

to where the buzzards flap with translucent wing,

in a hunt protracted over

 a green canvas redacted.

A Morse code track parades

The trails of trans-Atlantic jet planes,

and as a history unfolds for strangers, 

my arc of containment smiles

on what is now my Elba.

Ant-like is my progress in understanding,

but there is no escaping,

self.

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 Niall O'Connor is an internationally published poet and blogger, He lives in a garden, near the centre of Ireland, where Nature is his mentor. .“We are invited into a world where humans live in intimate contact with the earth, sea, and sky—where the elemental and its ancient mysteries and deep truths take precedence over the ego-based jockeying and maneuvering of cities.”