Astrophysics [For Maya]
Our bare feet in the damp grass, we spin after dusk,
As our mothers call us in by ones and twos, insistent.
Dizzy with freedom, palms and planets revolving together,
We play our games, pretend to be statues, or spin while laughing,
Giddy cosmonauts awaiting our landing.
Above us the stars traverse the stage in elegant alignments.
The Twins with their sculpted torsos cavort with the Pleiades,
Some goddesses so faint that they are almost forgotten,
Lost amid the rush of vertigo and gravitas,
Eleusian Mysteries conducted to flute, chime, and drum.
Three Graces pose themselves just so,
The curvatures of intention in a constellation of movement.
And for a while there is no up or down, beyond buoyancy,
No rules to obey, only floating perspectives,
The ancient forms breathing again,
For we are at the axis, peering into the very eye of night.
