when Pablo Neruda asked:

"what is water like in the stars?"

I thought: "maybe the great poet's on tilt this morning."

a question so uniquely strange that I didn’t bother to be curious.

I just went on my way living life between

someone's microscope and someone's telescope,

between diners and priests, between girls and women,

sometimes learning on the march.

there are forms of water in and circling the stars.

this is water not nearly as rare as the liquid running

from our kitchen faucets.

this is water in its cosmological enterprise.

but Neruda asked the question during the time

when few, if any in the know thought it reasonable.

water in the stars?

the question is found in Neruda’s: “Through a closed mouth the flies enter"

pages 249 to 251 in the volume: “Extravagaria”.

Google the title and save money.

also of interest is the question: “When did the lemons learn 

the same laws as the sun?"

there are rare confections between the pages of 249 and 251.

or one could say, a world.