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| Space.com screenshot, March 17, 2023 |
Chimney smoke a plume above me
in what I still call the heavens
on this equinoctial evening,
the old elms behind me
done with their tragic gestures,
calm now as the front settles in,
the high pale clouds opening
to the black velvet of infinity
crossed by a caravan of satellites
in unsettling procession.
As a boy I assumed this world
too vast to spoil ever,
awed to think so then
and easy to remember now,
nostalgic on this spring night.
First the air.
Then the oceans.
Then the sky.
Yet grateful still in my own field
as the heavens deepen,
the horizon clean and unbroken
against the dimming west,
for as long as it lasts.
Across the valley, hardly a light anywhere
on the slopes of Laurel Ridge,
then not even that.
—On the passing overhead of Elon Musk's SpaceX Starlink internet satellites
