Skylines and Horizons
Outside of city limits, earth
Meets waning sky, becoming one
Long linea nigra. A birth.
All that the eye sees when the sun
Sets low is boundary, yet none
Of this – what’s visible – contains
All that there is. Beyond all sight,
All silence, parameters, and planes,
I sense that there is something right
Along the edge that’s made of light.
Each time I’m on the highway driving
Back, there’s that moment when we turn
Around a bend. Not yet arriving,
Inside of me, I feel a burn.
A longing, a longing to return –
But not to the familiar blocks,
The taxis or the greasy spoon.
Instead, I want an equinox.
I want the sun to cross the moon,
To signal something coming soon.
Against the sun-less stretch of sky,
The towers reach above. What man
Has made, seen from the ground, seems high –
Seems higher than the eye can scan,
But from this distance, fades again.
Horizons give me wider views:
Yet still, they aren’t the whole frame.
The city skylines start to lose
Their novelty and seem the same.
They’re not the home from which I came.
Mary Grace Mangano is a poet, writer, and professor. She received her MFA in poetry at the University of St. Thomas in Houston and her poetry, essays, and reviews appear in Church Life Journal, The Windhover, Orchards Poetry Journal, The North American Anglican, Fare Forward, Ekstasis, and others. She teaches at Seton Hall University and lives in New Jersey.
Amethyst Review 