Transient Lives Forming under Moonlight

For Ken Seward

So we went out there
met some people
we wouldn't have
met, together heard
the song, a bit

off-key.   Now I go
out every morning
at 4 to see
the winter stars
begin their ascent
in early October.
Sirius greets me
& Jupiter moves
between Gemini:
with sharp binoculars
you can see
Galileo’s Jovian

jewels swimming
in ether.  Somewhere in this

sacred silence above

I wonder if Ken's
made it out there, to
the planets I mean,
even the stars, for
I believe he has somehow.

About transcendence I know
only of hiking in the high
Rockies or finding joy
with a woman. I imagine
the dead to be alone
in and about the scattered
hydrogen molecules
& cosmic rays guiding
them to the other end
of creation.  Of the rest
I do not know and cannot
say anything.  The letters
are nowhere to be found,

the post card and photos

long ago burned.  I sit in the grass
to await the lunar eclipse
really knowing who will
see it, who will not.