I watch Jupiter rise

in my palm tree every evening

a great lamp lit, rising out of the east

while Venus aflame, in trine

prances over the sunset

to the tilting moon’s gyrations

looping the loop

over my African roof.

 

Day by day she rises later

while I sit, chin on knee, speculating

my edges all fuzzed and kind of purring

in the breathing, breathless twilight

so its hard to tell where I begin and end

where the not-I is - or ain’t.

 

The lucent Saharan dusk

turquoise and numinous

switches on it’s indecently copious sky-lighting

and the bats ricochet out of the gloaming

like drunken drivers in a Particle Accelerator

making me think: Aha!

I don’t think anywhere else

puts on this spectacular show so daily

that the people don’t even see it at all!

While those that do

they creep out of their ant-holes

(balconies, beds, siestas, bottles, bath-tubs)

and gawp, stunned, mind-boggled

summoned on bended knee in reverence, awe

before the alchemy, the astrological expertise

of That-Which-Thought-It-All- Up-To-Begin-With.

That is no small-time Inventor

paltry cosmical wizard, for sure!

 

Jupiter lordly

 with its attendant moons

sails up the ecliptic

like a royal barque drawn by empyrean sky-horses

bestowing benediction on the commonality of stars

- not to mention mortals -

albeit like a Hollywood counterpart

overdoing the grandeur stunt;

overweaning infant!

Ah!

but the daring joy of him!

Hope! Faith!  Folly!

God bless his king-size heart!

 

 

 

1988