<sup>because this planet's radiance overcame me
                             —Dante, Paradiso, IX, 33

Translation from Historiae by Antonella Anedda</sup>

I dreamt that I saw the earth from far away, 
I saw fields, the moon, the undertow
and how each tide undermines earth with water. 
I wanted to reach Saturn, my planet
of fire and lead, so I was nourishing melancholy. 
I was spinning in the fog looking for you and you were below
among the living. You loved who I was not and would never be
yet there in the void, in that sidereal light I saw 
the autumn spinning the leaves with verdigris, 
I was hearing the thud of the wind upon a bedsheet
as one voice was calling another
and this one responded as something in the evening 
that was approaching with the shadow that fell on the chairs.

Already there in glory, already overcome by the radiance between planets, 
and yet I was starving myself with envy for life. 

^{(while wandering in the forest at Indian Point, Ellsworth, Maine)}

Bats watched them fall, cupped like tiny palms, 
toward earthen forests. 
They land, eager ears up, 
on twigs and felled branches. 

They nestle between lichen, 
  fungi, 
  figure out hyphae, 
  the deep composting web. 

Once homed, aliens echolocate via sonar chirps, 
mimic
Blue Jay, 
Hairy Woodpecker, 
Song Sparrow, 
Black-Capped Chickadee, 
Northern Parula, 
the Black-Throated Green Warbler. 

Thin sound beams traverse the woods, establish generations, 
the milky way’s travelers in their new division. 
The trill of me, me, me, a tiny army of green shells, 
parsing old and new ocean kinships. 

And then they wait. 
Wood fibers decay, 
car tires feed carbon black into morning breezes, 
a hint of rock dust, 
rush hour exhaust fumes. 

They stir the pot, assemble new fuel,
toward the day that conflagration will send them,         
spores and all, 
  toward, 
  toward the orbit, 
  beyond it, 
  into nebulae, 
  closer, so much closer 
  into the dark.

The way clouds taste as they go from castles to rabbits above your head.
You are twelve, your skin damp from the humid tropical day, the grass
under your arms and legs benign even if itchy. The way a million stars
scatter at night, and you in jersey gown and bare feet seek the same spot
from earlier in the day to count far away incandescent rocks and tucked
behind your ear your secret wish to spot a single UFO. The way a slice
of tres leches cake on your thirteenth birthday surrenders in unison on
your tongue its sweet milks. The way at twelve you tasted marvel and
by fourteen you’d tasted war.

Count o’er the million leagues from here to yonder star.
On then. On to the next count of a million more.
Sum up the myriad gleams that light the night;
Add too, the orbit where the cold bright moon doth soar.
That done, return to earth and with thy mind outline
That huge expanse called space; and then out from our Hearse
Of changing dust dream out the words—The Universe.

We’ve been told space
is like two dark lips colliding

like science fiction
it outlines a small cosmos

where fear hides in a glow
where negative space

becomes a place for wishing
a constellation of hazy tunes

of faint sharp vowels
a glossary of meteors

a telescope to god
a cold bright white

maybe distance damages us
maybe Jupiter

will suddenly surprise us
with a notion of holiness

but instead an old planet
takes over all the space

and we are reminded
of the traces of fire

in our gaze
defining our infidelities