by Dan Powers

Recalling The Names of Constellations

Last night, as I sat smoking
one last cigarette,
the moon, suspended
like God's clipped fingernail
silver above the lake,
the names of constellations
took me by surprise, recalled
more than thirty years
from the night when a girl,
whose last name I can't remember,
unhooked her bra and promised me,
as I promised her
that we'd be lovers forever.
We re-named each cluster
of stars that rose and slow danced
in the firefly summer swirl above us,
First Base,
Second,
Mystical Ship,
Lovers,
God's Fingernail,
Farting Henry,
and I happily climbed the ladder
of the water tank above the park
and spray painted bold and black
Dan & Jan 1969 Forever
while she sat waiting in the car,
her happiness my reward.

Thirty years later it seems magical
to remember, after separate lives,
distinct and silent across the distance
from Madison to Oxbow,
across all the people in between,
and all the risings of
Cassiopeia, Cepheus, Perseus,
through all those summer nights
following Andromeda,
with Venus nestled
in the hard crook of the Moon,
all the lives that we have lived
since the night we held on
for all we were worth
in the backseat
of my father's Ford Galaxy.

The water tower was torn down years ago.
the car traded for a pickup.
And we have traveled far, or not.
Our stars faded from our memories,
and Earth has spun a little crazier
tilted a little further on its side.
And we forgot to remember
each other and our constellations.

But still, somewhere,
light years down inside ourselves
we come back around,
stars ourselves,
in all that space and time
we are the same once more
and we recall
in the magic of one split second,
whatever we recall.