-Captain Midnight-

Let's begin.

Tonight I'll walk to the clearing between

The chicken coop and the grapevine.

Stars seem better there.

Nothing clinical,— just to look, to breathe them in.

I'm told it's my birthright, that I was born from such a place.

––Closer to home the Moon is a quick
Scythe's blade turning in on itself.

But me? I'm outbound into the spinning pin-

Wheel’s barb where hydrogen hunts me down,

Where the dense neutrons pulsate and gas giants bob 

Lighter than helium, into the veil’s breathless exposition;

The Dipper pouring from its cup's limitless capacity.

––Outbound, where Pollux is a drop of Cephei,

Where Cephei is a drip of V-Y Canis spit,

Where the weight of density is yet to be calculated.

There's a great romance to the great unknown.

––Homeward, the late-night guy across the street amuses me,

Walking his mutt for one last piss,— the hydrant, tenaciously
Sniffed at its foothold near the gutter.
Tonight I've walked outside to be among the stars, at one

With the deepest unreachable stars, and those unreachable

Nearest to where I stand,–– the cold among the burned,
The born among the dying in the endlessness of my neighborhood.

From beyond the backyard at 1017 / c. 1953