I felt your gaze all day as you drove the road toward me.
That night in the observatory I held my breath
to focus on Jupiter with five moons,
each lit like half-closed blind eyes,
all that old light taking eight minutes to reach us.
Then you found Saturn and made out the rings standing on knife-point
and the band of shadow-
the dark older than the light-
the same dark just beyond the porch lamp.
Though our distance is as constant as the dark,
you make the falling light new.
On one of the planets close enough to catch the light from a star,
we leaned into the telescope beneath a dome.
A star sends its light in all directions
like a king dispatching a navy that sinks in the crossing.
Under that dome, dark so we could see stars,
we leaned against the wall and only your light fell onto me.
|