The Lunar Night, Chicago
In the indigo sky
hang lights like lanterns
strung from here to eternity.
Bright holes punched in the night,
they creep in from the east, queued for
landing but aimed at the spotlit moon holding
fast in their path. But the moon gives way, first
to one plane, then the next, endlessly ceding its place
in line as if shy to touch down at O'Hare. Would
they even know how to handle a moon out
on the tarmac? Call the Marines! Call
Homeland Security! Just get that
thing quarantined before
it hurts some fool or
alters the tides.
In the icy park
we watch the planes,
the dog and I. Lights prowl
past us on two horizons, Damen and
Foster Avenues, impossibly distant in the
winter air that falls like gravel from my mouth,
the subzero air as cold as no air at all. Around us
spreads the pocked and cratered snow. We are alone.
If I were to slip here on the ice, hit my head, crack
my skull, the blood spreading like transmission
fluid as my dog whined and licked my face,
no one else would know. In space
no one can hear you whimper,
and we might as well
be on the moon.
airplanes | airports | blood | chicago | dogs | moon | night | poems | winter
