Voyager 2 & Voyager 1

Sometimes my husband

leaves bed

for a little spacewalk

and ends up with a case of aliens

in his throat.

 

When I try to wake him

it’s as though I’ve punctured a hole

in the oxygen tank

of his reality

and for a few moments he is just gasping,

a visitor here.

 

Hello luv, we live on earth.

 

From the outer rims

of our solar system, earth

just looks like a pixel of

blue light caught in a sunbeam.

Not even a pixel—

 

That’s what Voyager 2 & Voyager 1

saw from the edge of our heliosphere

And that’s the way my husband looks at me

when I wake him—

 

Like our life here on earth

is a half-pixel deep

and hardly to be believed—

 

Earth, luv, we live on earth.

 

My husband moves like an earthworm

across the carpet.

Does his best monkey.

Motions as if to offer a string

connected to something in sky

& I take it.

We act as two animals holding invisible balloons.