Distance

Cawing on the wind.
Far across the wide lawn,

A hurrying walker.

Not much closer,

At an acute angle,
A triple where
A young family clusters

In the shallow vale

Where the grass

Reaches the pond.

The little girl

Dabbles with a hand-net

Near the cattails.

Pursuing some tadpole

Or a backswimmer bug?

Too far to resolve

The flowers in the pattern

Of her bright pink sun dress.

The crow flock flies,

Tracing shifting black shapes

On the white sky.

Warped quadrangles,

Geometric clusters,

An outlying straggler.

Some clear night,

Peering into a scope's

Objective lens,

I scan the stars,

White pinpricks in the blackness,

Trying to recognize

Their configuration,

Their angles made, and spy

Some remote asteroid,

Or fill the circle with

The blue-white gnat-swarm

Of the Pleiades.

Patterns are native to the mind.

Stories spin out from shapes.

Over the millennia

Even constellations shift.

The world has grown wider.

In the distance the parents

Open the doors of their car.

The girl climbs in back.

Homeward bound.

Keep well.