Presence

It appeared as silently and sudden
as a hunting Peregrine.

I with my binoculars was quietly watching
a nuthatch foraging up and down an oak
across a glade of mayapples and trillium
when all at once a silver saucer
hovered, shimmering, between us.

Upside down, the nuthatch froze,
faded into wrinkled bark and ragged lichen gray.
I lowered my glasses, nestled into a hickory,
tipped my hat and waited.

And waited. No little green men. No periscope.
The thing reminded me of hi-hat cymbals
with neither a stand nor a hook to hang from.
No fanfare of brass. No statement at all
from that interstellar poker face:
no blink, no twitch, no show.
An hour passed.

It must have done what it came to do,
seen what it came to see—
it vanished through a crack
in space invisible to me.
Left me wide-eyed, breathless
and strangely elated

for sometimes presence is the message:
the hard cold starry universe
is more than gravity embodied.
Its heart beats, too.