Constellation

For Glenn

Sometimes when the Tucson sky is clear

after a rain I walk out under it

& point out Cassiopeia's zigzag walk,

the Twins curved away from each other

in some dark rich bed of company

spreading a thin light of gossip between them.

Up in the left lower-hand quadrant

the Bear rises from its cave.

In Massachusetts, lost to yourself in a yard of hay,

you scythe till you scythe the gleam

of the curved blade as the last arguments

flash from under where all days

seem to roll down to sleep

to hold such solitude, to let it go.

Here tonight in Arizona the skin doesn't chill

when the night shadows lay their hands

on me. Cardinals-one brownish red,

one bright small wisp of sunset-

flit from trunk to wavering branch,

they're smudges of blood some past revives

to every last detail, the way one's features

screwed up in rage or stupidity are still the child's face

we're born with, though worn to the texture of salt

we can't shake off like salt.

It's a part we throw ourselves into

too completely, the face

widening between us. We forget

the lines the emotion becomes clear along

& the emotion, widening, holds us

like crickets scritching, or the hush

where we've arrived & been, the past

keeping us company. I shinny up a tree

on your father's land to pluck the last

huge blossoms falling to a ground

which closes on itself, a rollercoasting

green on green, a "glen" you name it

after yourself, laughing, as you strike a match

to a shot of whiskey, tossing it down

&, tottering, heave a fiery glass

at a big overhanging pear.

The streak of light-firefly or falling star-

is what gets stuck in the dark,

the heartfelt half-drunk moments

we said what we felt.

Overhead the desert stars more than details

are small textured cubes of salt

darker than the thoughts bobbing my head,

darker than sky we're forever naming

constellation by constellation.

They never change, it's only what fisheye

lens we see from into what we'll never own,

those bright flames of whiskey,

those downed shots going right to our heads

where they will die.