Sunday Stanza: Beneath Empyrean Skies

I stepped outside where the night runs wide,
past fence line, gate, and tree,
where the world falls off to a whisper
and the sky remembers me.

No city hum, no restless drum,
no flicker of borrowed light—
just a pasture dark and breathing slow
and a sky stitched full of night.

It spilled above like a saddle blanket
thrown soft on a cooling horse,
each star a nail in a timbered sky
set firm by a steady force.

The Milky Way—like powdered chalk
on a blackboard brushed by time—
ran crooked and true from ridge to ridge,
a trail without reason or rhyme.

I tipped my hat to that endless spread,
to the quiet it carried down,
the kind you feel in your chest and bones
when there ain’t another soul around.

And I thought of nights from long ago
on a truck hood warm with day,
in Emery County fields where the alfalfa grew
and the busy world felt far away.

We’d point at stars we couldn’t name,
draw lines that didn’t quite meet,
but somehow knew in that open dark
There was holy ground beneath our feet.

Funny thing, how a man can grow—
fill his days with weight and care,
chasing clocks and fixing things,
till he forgets what’s always there.

But the sky doesn’t hurry, and it doesn’t explain,
it doesn’t argue, it doesn’t pretend—
it just hangs those lights in quiet rows
like it’s done since the command, “Begin”.

And standing there, I felt it plain,
as sure as a calf finds its dam—
that the same hand that shaped that endless night
still keeps a steady hold on man.

No sermon spoke, no choir sang,
no page was turned or read,
just a stillness deep as a winter field
and a peace that softly spread.

So I lingered there a minute more
than a busy man might choose,
letting the weight of the world slip off
like dust from a well-worn boot.

Then I turned for home through the quiet dark,
past shadow, fence, and tree—
but I carried a piece of that endless sky
that had, for a moment, carried me.

And if you’ve never stood where the night runs wide
and the stars fall thick and slow—
well, there’s truths out there you won’t find anywhere
but only where most people don’t go.

DocBott