Descending

As a youth,
I knew not of crowded city streets,
the smells of compacted people,
all their schedules and goals and jostling.

I loved the woods,
and the lake waters, and the snow.
The many greens of Midsummer:
faded teal, fatty yellow, dark forest, zingy lime;
wreaths of chlorophylls dewed and shiny.

And, ahh, those shapes:
ovata, elliptica, falcata, keeled stars,
thick with juices, I would count,
run my pointer finger along those pinnated veins,
and I would think, “Yes, that’s the sun.”
That’s how it enlivens all of this, like blood:
flows slow; pumps hard; is sticky.

I flow, am two things at once, a quantic entity.
Duality may come easy to photons, but not to me.
I am wrangled in my nature, confused by behavior,
so unlike earth and the heavens.

I count, run my pointer finger along
the invisible roads of the constellations, wonder if Galileo
ever played Connect the Dots like I, if Carl Sagan
thought that these shapes were but a means to an end.

I know Sagan might have scoffed if I told him
I’ve heard the Ram breathe,
I’ve heard the Lyre strummed,
caught the waters from Aquarius’s jug
in my outstretched palms.

I know that my mind forms illusions,
fools me well,
sees faces where there are none.
A merciless engine, powering me into lands
with no overt ground.

So forgive me.

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Tags: constellations, nature, philosophy, poems, Poetry, Stars, trees, universe, writing