Our daughters drift beyond us.
They are growing up—sometimes
just another way of saying “apart”—
so are not with us tonight where
from a hot tub we don’t mind
not sharing, far from them
we wait, watch beneath
a moonless sky so full of stars
it’s difficult to locate Leo
behind the almost leafless oaks.
No matter: stars are falling
at a rate of 1200 per hour—
faint peripheral flarings, brief
pyrotechnic chars that cast quick
shadows, leave afterimage arcs.
Earth is wading what NASA
scientists call the “river of rubble”
Comet Tempel-Tuttle strews
across our path every 33 years.
Each November we enter it.
What happens then depends upon
“debris swarm” density, longitude,
and how the earth goes around the sun.
What happens has to do with how
what goes around comes around,
with how we long to be pulled in
by something and not drift,
with how we refuse loss, approve
the light, long for reunion,
for moments brighter than the moon.
After your blouse and jeans blazed
across my line of sight, and you
stepped into this tub beside me,
for two hours we weren’t for a second
apart but centered, looking up,
working at 1200 kisses an hour,
300 for each daughter who is not
here to have her shadow cast,
secure knowing tomorrow the stars
will be right where we leave them—
the Big Dipper still pointing
the way to Polaris, the Sickle
of Leo, Orion with his dogs,
the Pleiades still two sisters more
than we have daughters.
Some nights we would stand
in this dark a long time
to see them again.
Unlike Tempel-Tuttle, their
reappearance is unpredictable.
They are here, then gone, then back.
We are left with the dust that,
not quite reaching us, showers
tonight with light—like some part
of ourselves we thought we’d lost.
its tail. We are at mutual perihelion,
and observing you by starlight
toweling off, I have a bright idea. Alone,
we seem to be thinking of nothing else.