Unknown Objects
Halfway through the night I still cannot explain, we saw it all—
the fractal glint of something hanging above the birches. Orange
& white & drumming. On wet knees in the open field, clustered
at the edges of the star-map, we spoke as if tenured. It was not
planetshine, not a satellite, not the glow of street-lights echoing
off cloud. It held. Hung. Waited there like a clot of uncooled
shrapnel welded into space. So when, at last, it rifled across the sky
faster than our excuses, clipping behind the horizon & the dark
stilts of a cell tower, what could we do but leave that field, hike
voicelessly home along a deer-trail through the appalling
room of a night no longer ours? I did not want to be at the back
of the column lugging the telescope like a bazooka. But doing so,
I knew something. There are only so many ways to describe
cigarettes crossing a darkened field. Space junk, fireflies,
sometimes dancers. All of these are true.