22.27.00.06.20.07

I've been feeling especially uninspired lately, so I wrote a poem---bullshit, I know.

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Tonight a man I do not know
told me to look at the sky
to watch the station and the shuttle
pass slowly and quietly by
the white summer moon.

I followed his finger and tried
to see what I thought were men
in the stars, but all I espied
were two water bugs gliding
across a black lagoon.

They skimmed along the surface,
taking time to pass, and I
wondered if the heavens had sunk
or if the earth began to fly,
its furnishings strewn

against the dark glass of space.
When soon those peopled stars, those high
dreams of our limited sight,
submerged themselves in the watery sky,
their gravity unhewn,

and then the bugs faded like sparklers die,
cooling and falling on the fourth of July.