From East to West

Once, it was necessary to imagine the sky. Small, I saw just a slice,
tiny puzzle piece, the bit between electric lines and Stirling Street’s
brick rowhouses. The moon mostly eluded me, and the fugitive stars,
hidden beneath clouds of car exhaust. I had to move out west to see
past that illusion. On the ride to California in an over-heating Datsun,
New Mexico’s wide skies and Arizona’s deserts sparked only fear,
the space between the lights of human settlements so wide,
          I shivered.
It was a feral sky, home to fire, flood, cosmic collisions that could
swallow my world whole, belch out a thousand galaxies, swirling
like protozoa under the lens. I could see for the first time that matter,
even that big tree or you or I, were actually as insubstantial as a wisp
of cloud wafting across the midday sky.