We celebrate the season this way,
trying to be the first to find him,
to round the name Orion in a cloud
of breath. Years past,
as autumn shuffled in its stars
and we walked the open fields,
you would repeat the Arabic names
of his shoulder and heel, scuttle your fingers up
my back like the scorpion that chases him,
point out Canis Major loyal at his feet.
Tonight when we step from the porch,
you point above us to the hunter
and silently walk away,
leaving me standing
under his shield.
Orion's sword hangs heavy
off his bright belt, a pulsing
blade, sheathed in the heat
of nuclear fusion. Now I know
his sword's middle star is not
a star -- just a fine nebula swirl,
magnesium powder flashing
off a photographer's plate.
And the Seven Sisters are really a hundred
clustered in the dust of their birth,
most too unsure of themselves to shine
any brighter.
In the fluorescence of the bathroom
I find new lines in the skin
of my face like the hidden rings
of Neptune coming clearer in the scope.
I see my thighs are widening like
the new edges of a whirlpool galaxy.
My breasts are softer and long,
caught full in the black-hole stretch
between gravity and vanity.
When we go to bed
I use the light of one candle
to wash myself young in a distant flutter.
I read the words of three great teachers
who considered the way things seem.
Buddha said that just as a magician
makes illusions, nothing is as it appears.
Sartre said that things are entirely
what they appear to be, and behind them
there is nothing.
But Sagan said when you are across from me,
over at the cold edge of the field,
I am seeing you not as you are now
but as you just were,
a hundred-millionth of a second ago,
which Sagan said was too small to notice.
But I perceive that fractional time
and finally understand it is not you
who keeps us from connecting,
living in a vacuum-thin Sartre dimension.
It is the fine rules of science
that catch us in the finite speed of light,
in the moonshine 8 minutes old.
Like the rest of the constellations tonight,
you are something I am trying