Sky Signs

As daylight fades,
blue ascends to ebony,
the universe unfolds.

In small discoveries, stars
grow out of faintness into fire,
constellations intertwine:
a net of diamonds cast across—
the neurons of my mind.

Orion stalks across my sky,
Cygnus hovers over my July.
In truth, of course, those mythic forms
are only cold hard points pricked
in the frameless, lineless night.
Scorpius and Vega, Antares and Altair:
seething fusion furnaces,
with names they wouldn't answer to
and neighbors nowhere near.

Ah, cold hard truth—is it enough?
Is it even wholly true?

A planet circles Pollux, beta star
of  twins we know as Gemini.
Maybe—telescopes can’t say—
as dusk falls on that far-off world,
a creature with an octahedral eye
peers up from purple lawn to purple sky,
draws a line from  Twin to Twin
(we’d call them Sol and Castor),
and wonders if its birth beneath that sign
explains its long thin noses.