-celestial notations from the humdrum of a natural life-

the young woman, clearly less than half my age

standing before me in line turned swiftly

with the eyes of an assassin, scolding me to step back,

and so I stepped back, hovering briefly above her head

looking down from below the sharp florescence at the crooked

part in the middle of her hair,––  a naked, narrow path running

through a dark, tangled thicket of black. I stepped back.

I broke through the ceiling. I stepped back

gazing downward from beyond the pole-wires dipping with clinging birds.

I hovered briefly over the cumulus, the stratus, and nimbostratus,

I stepped back from the rushing thrust of the turbines,

and beyond them, the puckered dust of the Moon, then backward 

to acid Venus exposing her false face for the sake of a glistening exhibition.

I stepped back, ducking below the dusty rings of Saturn to glimpse

the pinprick of Earth, posing for Cassini's documentation; hovered

from beyond the outer planets, iced-cold, gassed-up and empty-handed,

then outbound, glanced the Sun’s corona, stepping back, onward

and outbound to the grieving veil of the Crab, an endless state of mourning

over the violent death of its star.

I stepped back into the deepest realms of the darkest sides of matter

and then and then and then and then (as Neruda poignantly questioned in

"Where Can Quillermina Be"?) a sharp, sudden poke to my back

from an unforgiving index finger admonished me to step forward because

down here, down here at the Stop & Shop I’m next in line to the check-out register, rudely reminding me of my proper place in the universe, at the handlebar

of a squealing metal shopping-cart holding my goods.

Friday