Matthew Lippman

Most days I try really hard to think about the sky

but I can’t think about it anymore.

I just look at it.

I don’t even know what I am looking at.

Sometimes it’s just a music sheet filled with quarter notes and sixteenth notes

that I couldn’t play

even if I knew how to play the flute.

Last night I looked at the sky

and saw Beethoven,

then went inside and listened to the 5th Symphony.

When was the last time you listened to the 5th symphony?

I don’t care that it’s European music.

That he was German.

Or deaf.

Or that his father beat him to a pulp for being an assassin of the strings.

He was up in the sky and Orion’s Belt was up there too

and every time I see it, I think about my daughter, Natalie.

When she was a kid and couldn’t sleep,

I’d take her outside at 1 in the morning and say, Look up,

that’s Orion’s Belt,

and then we’d go inside and she’d fall asleep and all of my ire

would disintegrate into stars.

That’s what the sky can do for you?

It makes you disappear into stars.

I don’t care how many atom bombs are out there in their silos

ready to fly across the sky with the Aurora Borealis

and blow this place to pieces.

If I could I would bury this computer and all the cell phones that go with it,

all the airplanes and drones and rocket ships

just to say good morning to the birds.

The sky doesn’t need us in it anymore.

It never needed us in it in the first place.

I want to apologize to the sky,

Say, I am sorry sky,

for all of us

and what we have done to your atmosphere,

then never think about it again,

just go outside into the garden and play Beethoven songs on the flute

all day long

to the clouds.