TO A CHILD whose eyeballs still wobble and glow like a pair of loose glass marbles, each day is a felt kaleidoscope circulating luminous gemstones that shower his vision as they tumble with glimpses of genuine wonder and wonder’s eternal reflections.
The sky, to a child, is a bottomless well to dive into and drink. It feels like it’s inside him. The child melts into heaven, and heaven becomes the child. The caramel of Eden has yet to harden and sour, so, piercing the taffy daylight with a single unfurling finger, mystic and meteorologist simultaneously, he also pierces his soul.
Sky-watcher, soul-surfer, his tongue is wet but wooden — too dumb to give this awe its proper trumpet. He says what a child would say, in the way that a child would say it, shrouded in the lilt of a question . . . Mama, why is the sky so blue?