| for my students, who inspired this, especially for my beginning astronomy laboratory students, but for all my students through 1981 |
I'm told that a queen sits rocking, in her jewelled chair,
all night, circling the pole star.
She goes nowhere. I point there,
not finding her.
In the dark's nebulous glare,
what planet, what star, is not blurred
past recognition? Like the hum of crickets
in a near meadow, dark came pre-ordained
and even the moon tonight is eclipsed by trees.
Not the dog star, but a mere dog barks,
until the spinning axis yields
a sky out of this earth, a singing field
| Gainesville, 1981; revised slightly, Palatka, 2013.) | |
| Published in Nightshade Review. |