Midnight at the planetarium
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.
Hi Ed, Thanks for sending this post of your poem. Wow! It is very deep and provoking. I need to read it a few more times. Is this towards the end of your second poetry book??? Or???? Nancy
Nancy Fitzgerald, SSJ St. Martin de Porres School 2300 West Lehigh Ave. Philadelphia., PA 19132 215-223-6872 x409
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I’m not sure if this is going in the new book. I am still trying to get the order to make some sense. But it might be part of it. Thank you for reading.