Making Love to the Stars
By Hank Edson
In the car we drove to go to the movie
We flew, we smoked, talking of love
Unadmittedly there on its highway
Banking, skimming through rolling hills
We observed there a conjunction
In its sky tonight we from the city
Breathed in the brightness open from stars
Were dazzled by its chimes and scales
By Venus, Mars, and Jupiter
And further below the moon's held darkness
Splashed in a silver bowl like sleep
Of the truth we gazed dazzled with awe
Beneath the roof of our car beneath
All space made by our limited sense
To measure by which one said of it
"That ninety-three million miles of light
Was what we called the distance to the sun
And our telescopes looked that distance
As if that distance were only a hair
And looked again as many light miles"
It was plain above our lifted heads
Before our eyes, we drove, I to say
"So much space ~" and the other to reply
"And not another sign of life!"
"Maybe," I suggested, "they are ignoring ~"
"Us? ~ Yes, maybe they are; they don't
Care for our constant need in it for
One of those mechanical solutions
Always keeping the mechanic employed"
I unrolled the window and the wind
Came flapping on the highway lamp light
But the constellating triangular
Of planets rest in dark country air
Reaching through the brilliant shade of space
Like fingertips, the moon's slender shell
Cupping its weight receiving grace
Everywhere living but not working here
This effortless beauty existing
In harmony free and timeless
Was simply an enchantment given me
And I believe in its spell cast over
Us each molding in each other's arms
Such a short while later she and me
Beginning that distance of our sense
Oblivious to the screen and figures
Featured in lights of Technicolor
Eyes closed, lips pressed, burning of the flesh
Blinded to death, but loving each other.
