---

∴

tonight,

i took a sleeping bag
and laid it out on my deck.

it’s not an old deck,
but i did such a horrid job staining it
that it looks about ready
to fall down,

and the wood has warped
just enough
to make you think
it wants to.

 

i heard that a comet had passed
a while ago
and we –
well, earth, rather –
are traveling through its debris.

so i laid down
with my back against this
splintered and rickety raft,
afloat in the land of crickets
and little frogs,
and stared at the night sky,
and waited.

 

see,
when something as big as a comet
passes us,

it leaves a wake,

that we intercept
like a jogger
plowing through
a cloud of gnats,
occupied by surprise
and the blinking of eyes.

 

i waited,
and then they came.
great, fleeting flashes,
and long,
lightning-smoke trails.

 

one.

two.

three.

 

a painter’s slash across the sky.

 

they were like
the memorable snapshots
i have
of love:

igniting
and flaring
and fading
and gone

so quickly –

quicker than i had time to respond.

 

if i had blinked,
i might have missed it all.

 

but there they were,
flash bulbs
bursting
in the atmosphere,
attesting

that a comet had been here.
it was real,
though unseen.

 

even the cosmic dust
says evidentialy so.

∴

 

 

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