title: The Long Lake: And Other Poems
author: Daril Bentley
description: Daril Bentley is the author of two previous books of poetry. He is a career editor and writer who has edited many well-known authors of fiction and nonfiction, as well as celebrated poets past and present. He has published poems in periodicals with national and regional circulation, and has received honors in numerous national and international competitions, including semifinalist for the Yale Series of Younger Poets and finalist and guest reader in the Scottish International Open Poetry Competition.
zlib_text: 
  
  
  ### BEYOND THE SILVER SKY  
  
  
  
  
  
  by  
  
  
  
  
  
  KENNETH BULMER
  
  
  
  
  
    
  
  
  
  
  
  ACE BOOKS, INC. 23 West 47th Street, New York 36, N.Y.
  
  
  
  
  
  BEYOND THE SILVER SKY
  
  
  
  
  
  Copyright ©, 1961, by Ace Books, Inc. All Rights Reserved
  
  
  
  
  
    
  
  
  
  
  
  ### I
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  The wild lands had encroached perilously around the homestead in the ten
  seasons since he had gone away from Ochiltree. The nearness of the sky shocked
  him. He started the turboflier again from where he had paused along the ridge
  and dived towards the house in a sweeping curve that crossed matted beds of
  weeds and slides of glutinous mud where there had been trim rows of tended
  juicy bivalves the day he waved goodbye.
  
  
  
  
  
  His long hair swirled in the turbulence of his passage and the homecoming ache
  in him filled his throat with a longing both sweet and poignant. No man with
  wisdom in his skull stayed away too long. Too long: the very syllables echoed
  the deflated depression that had sprung so unexpectedly and disconsolately
  upon him. Everythi