Lead boots blue sky

For a sky this blue you need lead boots to keep from flying up.
Having learned the hard way, I now own lead diving boots.
It was on this day last year, when, innocently enough, I wandered
outside, looked heavenward, noted the deep blueness of the sky
and began to rise. Gathering speed I reached for the leader
of the spruce tree by the front step—but wasn’t close enough
or strong enough and it slipped through my fingers—and I rose.
Our house was rapidly receding. The city became a bluish
map with a few shrinking dots moving along fading lines.
The air was a vast sea that kept pushing me up to its surface.
The blue intensity deepened as the oceans came into view.
The curve of the earth tightened and I was lost in azure.
I shut my eyes, focused on the browns of fall—and still,
clamourous trains of blue steamed through my mind.
I breathed, released, absent air, and meditated on the shades
of earth, repeating a hasty string of mantras that came, as it were,
out of the blue: “soil, summer-fallow, clay, loam, dust, humus…,”
and flew straight down with such speed I’d have disintegrated
the sidewalk, but I appended, came mindful of green, slowed
my descent. I channelled canola fields in bloom and floated slow,
landing on our front step. I went inside. Deb was just coming out
of the bathroom and asked if I would make eggs for breakfast,
sunny-side up, which was peculiar, as she always prefers scrambled.
I said, “I’m be happy to make eggs, but will need to go shopping later.”
At the scuba diving store I asked if they carried any lead boots.
The sales lady, who wore a bright purple scarf said,
“We only have one pair left.”
“I’d like to buy them,” I said.
“You’re the ninth person this week to buy lead boots, what’s going on?”
“I don’t know,” I said, “but I will need them when my meditation is off.”
“God,” she said, “I love this town.”