The Astronomer’s Curfew

It is not just the sky

steamrolled by hospice clouds.

Too, the inner-curvature

of calcium, you

came thoughtful

in to this impulsive (& frankly),

self-pleasured time. When

from a young age, you

unpuzzled the stars in to couplets,

in bars, everyone agreed.

The tune: 1st quarter

with drunken precision

right in to the slot;

vintage 80s bones, waxing

gibbous—now, nearly 2020,

meagerly squinting out

blurred, black tridents

turned on their sides.

Oak leaves will soon fall

in crescent shadows

across brick shopfronts

& onto re-cemented trail in

blindfold-purple, incurious light.

Is it so: inside our

bones, we are scything

the cane, walking away from

the stipends & perks & payouts

yet ghostwriters

—they bury the blues

of this most honest of skies:

arrange us, sowing pastures

of no actual life:

cranes, pelleting buckwheat

under a stomach of clouds.