Midnight at the planetarium

July 25, 2022

Is that Jupiter out there smiling down on us?

Knowing we’ll be here for a few scant years

at best. A saintly old man in a cardigan

passes by, smelling of whiskey and pipe

tobacco and you whisper he looks like

Einstein—with that head of hair – and then Venus

comes into play, and tiny whispers

circulate thru the Milky Way,

so, you touch my arm, and I can smell

sweet Sagittarius in your hair, and a touch

 of the Aurora Borealis is reflecting from your

rosy cheeks. We are all travelers says Einstein,

and he takes off his spectacles and tells us

Tolstoy was a Virgo, and we consult the sky map.

 You are radiant and I am consumed in stodgy details:

Show me the rings of Saturn if you dare, I say.

But you name the moons

 of Jupiter instead: Io, Europa, Ganymede, Callisto.

I’m still computing distance; your breath

is like the first sip of summer wine

and we sit on a precipice high

over the New Mexico mountains and we say to each other

that one day I will be going north,

and you will be going south.

We ignore the clock and turn our

attention to the rim of the galaxy and deep

deep space and the chasm between us.