A 'Sort-of Parody' to...On Looking Up By Chance at the Constellations

this morning the sky went from this...

to this...

...to this, within 45 minutes.

You'll wait a long, long time for anything much
To happen in heaven beyond the floats of cloud…RobertFrost

…ah, perhaps,

but this sky-dome bears witness to all human plight

Sparking the hunger in love-songs we write

In the night while the rush of its rain-song is lent

To fuel hugs and kisses and passion’s storm spent

‘Neath the low bars of brooding ere dawn breathes awry

The cocoon of darkness where hope’s butterfly

Wafts to waking wonder; we comb past’s lament

To salvage the best of Time’s sheer filament

For we, peon-masters of mute moment-mirth

Scatter fumbling footprints beneath heaven’s girth

And the floating of clouds; mother’s chasing the hem

Of childhood and girlhood on its diadem

And we cannot wait with eyes squeezed tightly shut

In the hoping of holding what cannot be caught

Save a frame shaped in thought; while the eons of sky

Wait long, long above us; buds break, bloom then die

As four-season circuits unravel their plight

And shrivel to nothing youth’s buxom delight

Yet all the while over vast century-shift

The frigates of Eden’s maiden voyage drift

Blue-gray, coral-gold, white fleets silver-crowned

Sailing on ether oceans uncharted, unbound

Above plebeian passage of cradle to grave

Where all things human must muster and brave

The moods of the sky; planet-stippled wraith

We suffer its fortune of flood, famine faith

Midnight rain, morning sun, noon-aria, nocturne

Beneath aerial awning we live, love and learn

Though we would wait long in the sky for much more

Than vapor flotilla on seas with no shore

Here we are stunned every hour by its song

Where nothing remains what it is very long…

© Janet Martin