Under The Crab Nebula

It's an accident,

all of us out studying the stars,

as if we really could read the sky

and came here on purpose,

when in fact the darkness

simply overtook us.

We're ranged in a circle on the grass

like one wave

of an expanding nebula,

parents, sisters, the men we've attracted,

a brother, his wife, and in her belly

our next generation.

Someone tells a joke,

and when my father, on the other side,

misses the punch line

I repeat it for him, raising my voice

to cross the space between us.

In the dark

I can't tell if he's laughing.

My brother spots a falling star,

which might just be a bug

streaking through the street light.

And what do we know?

The dippers, of course,

the North Star.

My mother, the school teacher,

sees a little more.

She traces a cross,

and calls it a swan.

A square she calls an ancient hero.

But if the galaxies hold other figures,

we'll never find them.

The sky's a sheet of braille

we can't read

because we don't know what we're searching for.

We look up

and hope for something,

but only our mother,

whose heart has stopped

and started, knows

how to believe.

From somewhere in the circle,

she describes the invisible universe -

planets lost in the city lights,

nebulas dimmed by distance.

The little we can see

has been seen before.

What we can't see hangs over us

pulsing, radiant.

She rises

and says goodnight.

The next moment we all rise.

Our ring collapses, then breaks apart.

As we stray toward the house

we form a larger,

shifting shape.

At least I think we do, but I

can't make it out from here.