Waiting for the Sky to Clear

There's something electric in dressing by moonlight:
Threading abandoned streets
at raw Wolf Hour when families tremble behind blinds,
I search for the patch of darkness
that will let me see.

This is my solitaire,
and I have plotted moves to eliminate the city
and again find the fingers of dust
that paint the sky...
Later, when the strategy seems blocked by cloud and tree
I'm granted an opening
and at last find the stars.

The chaperone moon did not permit
the same show we danced to last, you and I,
but if you had been with me
we'd have shared Jupiter
(cancerous orange on the Crab)
and ran wildly unfettered with the Hunter's dogs
across the endless blue-black fields
until the sky closed upon us again...

----------

Hey, gang, the Leonids are upon us again (or at least shortly will be).

This was a fragment written very early in the morning (in 2002, for anyone trying to figure out when I was seeing Jupiter in Cancer) after driving out into the country by myself to watch the Leonids. It was a pretty crummy night for viewing overall, but I lucked out and got a brief window of clear sky for an hour or so.

It's a weird thing, I suppose, to be driving out to the middle of nowhere and leaning on your car out in the cold all by yourself, but it has its merits. Gives you a chance to think, for one thing.

I wish I'd written down in my poem notes what else I was thinking at the time, but I imagine I was in a hurry to get back to bed at that point.