From this valley where we’ve spent
more than a decade of retirement,
the mountains seem more distant, guised
in mist. I can’t believe my eyes,
knowing that measured miles
would bring the Blue Ridge closer, while
robbing its color. Distance is space, unseen
beyond and in between
what you perceive with somewhat sharper senses
or through telescopic lenses.
Out there, out there, far, far beyond the air
that feeds our blood, beyond the stratosphere
a light years-distant spattering of stars
appears fixed in its firmament, an arch
of two dimensions, letting us become
empiricists of the imagination,
ignoring what we cannot see—
space and time of real enormity—
projecting nonexistent lines to join
seemingly adjacent stellar points
