Blue Sonata

I see where the blue begins, A curve at the edge of the sky, Varies where low clouds gather and thins, In softest whispers I long to fly. Each brush with the deep and the bare, Each glint in the tender light Holds, at the fullness of the air, The presage of infinite flight.

What then is the bloom of the dusk? A last flicker glazed in the vein, With scents of the world and the musk That twists in the slow fall of rain. Pray draw me to linger awhile, In the hard beat of soft, passing gray, For life, without the tethering smile, Would leave it so easily, fray.

• John Crowe Ransom