Monday, March 30, 2020

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.