On the KT a few miles above Virgin, night skies
Are dark skies, especially near solstice, when
Few tourists are touring the snow-laced roads
Through the high country past Sunday sunset. No
Streetlights, no businesses or houses, no
Campers in RVs. Only the moon interferes
With the starlight. Once in a while, a jet blinks by.
Once in a while, another silent satellite flickers.
Body, the usual concatenation of assembled parts,
A car in old snow, a soul skating over thin ice,
Waited for the small light, the faint, promised sight.
The sun had sunk and left a last, diluted smear
Of blood in water colors. The moon, just beginning
Her second quarter, had a slight baby bump.
Would she obscure the comet's smudge, set to glow
Somewhere below her, near the Pleiades tonight?
Body was no astronomer, certainly no Tycho Brahe
Eagle-eyed all night, with or without his silver
Nose tied on tight. How many rare events
Have been missed for failing to impose themselves
On our sight? Body waiting mused that maybe
That’s why myth, magic, and religion were tied
So closely to the night. Its events could be startling
And could be predicted sometimes, but it required
So much attention, so much squinting, so much
Surrender of sleep that it was faith inchoate just to watch.
And then, between here in the high dark, and there
Below in the blazingly lit electric valleys, there were
So many dangerous, blundering beasts with horns,
So many steep slopes lined with thin, dark ice
To navigate alertly on the way back down.
It was as foolish, almost, as peering into a crystal
Ball to have driven up here in hopes of a sighting,
A boast-worthy vision of a small comet
In the great pensieve of the sky tonight.
But the wind made it interesting, made it worthwhile,
A strange, comfortable, rumbling giant's chuckle
And hum, as if the night itself were muttering
Happily in its loneliness, not realizing one sneaky
Little human was still down there listening, delightedly.
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