“Look at the stars, look, where’s the moon?”

Gone against the glow of ballpark lights.

Orion is very prominent, and has a dog.

He owns a sword too, like a pirate,

but he’s called a hunter and fears no animal.

Three stars lining up like that is a marvel.

When Orion appears it’s time

to put your bathing suit away.

An arachnid brought Orion down.

Our nephew, acquiring language, holding hands,

looks up:

Botein, the belly star, for spring when all lambs

receive raspberries from parents

to celebrate the greening of things

and also mark their escape from the cave

of Cyclops. If you look at the night sky

with children

you can hear their laughs.

“Look at the stars, look, where’s the moon?”

Gone against the glow of ballpark lights.

One day in Ipswich Jimmy Bacchus sat

at a picnic table eating fish and chips

when a bandit came and threatened the clam shack owner.

Terrified, Jimmy jumped into the marsh.

For no apparent reason, he turned into a fish

below water and a goat above. Still,

he managed to phone for help and the bandit ran off.

As a reward, the owner placed a rendering

of Jimmy’s new look on the clam shack

sign above the road, open in season four to midnight.

Gone against the glow of ballpark lights,

behind trees, crossing railroad tracks.

Will you look for the site

of your great-grandmother’s family

in the ground a mile away

near the mills they worked, now also gone?

“Look at the stars, look, where’s the moon?”

Isis threw grain into the night sky

and smeared the heavens like glitter,

igniting the Milky Way.

Nothing grew

except brighter.

Isis may have secretly

written poetry.

I am neither the chronicler of spring buds

on cottonwood branches, nor the compiler

of indices from international news sources.

I am he who ate Easter dinner

with family at his sister’s house,

waking up on the fold-out couch

with his wife, playing with our nephews

in our pajamas throughout the morning.

God love our secular family!

We made the drive back Sunday night

to our own small place in the city

making the turn into another work week,

a welcome respite of flannel sheets

and warm blankets, reading under the lamp.

It’s a shame the boys won’t remember themselves

at ages four and two

doing and saying things that amuse us.

If you were born just after the fall equinox

you may be inclined to study justice

and virtue. If you are a Libra and not so

inclined, no harm shall come to you.

Still, justice and virtue are worth a look.

The beginning whisper of crickets

could be rain hitting the street

softly, so soft, the slightest change

will give it away, and it’s only

my mind making meaning from sound

not the rain I want to come.

____Daniel Bouchard’s third book, The Filaments was published by Zasterle Press in 2006. Others include Some Mountains Removed (Subpress, 2005) and Diminutive Revolutions (2000). He edits The Poker and lives in the Boston area.