THE GARDEN
and we just stepped off the edge to dance
our way between the portals of stars and time.
Imagine being an astronaut filled with sunlight,
standing at the edge of all that darkness,
a knife on the horizon, the Kármán Line,
60 miles straight up, a violent and fiery
boundary that separates our atmosphere
from outer space. Did you know that
the real Capt. Kirk, the oldest man ever
to venture into space, said it was so profound,
he wept. His tears, small diamonds of the first water.
With a smile like that, the loftiness of altitude
would become a quaint concept.
We could don our shiny new astronaut wings
and salute the mesosphere,
and revel in the weightlessness of space.
Commander Chris Hadfield, a real live astronaut,
said, You can’t imagine how dark it is out there.
He should know. The odor space is like hot metal,
or seared meat—not that you can smell a Sunday barbie—
let alone, breathe in the perfect vacuum of space.
What’s startling is how the color of the sky
disappears completely without a gasp.
But when you smile, it sucks the air
right out of this room and there is nothing between us,
save for the stars and the errant circling planets,
scattering the ancient light into our eyes.
The sun’s fiery corona blossoms like a flower
in the garden of your smile.
1/19/22 CPITS Write On! Terri Glass class
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