Night’s stars break through holes in the sky,
6000 thumb-size moons I gaze at fixedly
as if to escape smallness of myself
lounging in a white, wicker chair on the front porch.
I’ve never studied astronomy, know nothing
about mathematics of the subject.
I’m not a science-minded person.
I’m an aesthete longing to find beauty,
and the sky canopies my fulfillment.
Friends ask why I don’t invite someone
to sit with me, share the sky. If I did,
I would feel I had betrayed a lover, literally.
I connect romantically with the sky.
I’m attracted to its androgynous embrace,
its steadfast and permanent availability.
I don’t worry about it straying away from me
or becoming tired of my mediocrity.
I’m not jealous of its other doxies because
when I look upward, my interrelationship
feels singular.
I break away for a moment, sway back and forth
in the rocker, watch night become a deeper black,
wrap itself around my summer shoulders like a gift
from the Grim Reaper. There will be no more sky
after I’m gone. Heaven is these moments on the porch,
the indefinable vastness I am allowed to look at
as if fate had given me a sneak peek at eternity.
