the bluest sky

Baby bear paw print. Mama close by....

6am on a Saturday, driving down that old growth highway to teach dance in one of our state prisons, I see the bluest, darkest sky. The blackest blue, more blue than blue, cresting the top of the hill. In my body it is, that sky, sweeping through, settling into and around…what? My heart, I guess, though maybe it's my soul -- a word I never say out loud. I drive down the hill, and my body is now in. Inside the sky, where there is nothing for a moment, and then the truly blue dark becomes light, the fog, fast and thick, and I can't see -- anything. None of us can. I lean in, hunch myself over the steering wheel. 65 miles per hour becomes 55, quick, becomes 45, 35, 25, 15, miles per hour, inching along the highway. All of us, inching the brightest bright sky. And then, just as fast, it's ice. Land covered in. Trees covered in. Grasses too. The brightest bright and the bluest blue and I stay on, close to and around the sky that is cresting. Now my body, as I drive. Drive on.

xo,
joanna