The stars
think themselves into existence
and know themselves too good
for words:
dippers,
plough.
The trouble comes at picnics -
the last to leave, lovers lying
head to head, sky-faced,
naming the unnameable with eyes
closed – flickerings – the unknown
knowing the unknowable. After a while,
it becomes difficult to separate
what about them moves the most –
the bright intangibility of something
that’s no longer there from the utter
absence that beckons in between -
the echoed darkness or the dark
unechoing. ‘Look’, she says,
pointing to neither,
‘how cold is that?’
