At ten thousand feet we’d watch
the satellites trace their quiet
geometries across a sky as black
as a bird’s eye. What was I, ten?
eleven? More said some were UFOs.
We’d see them first as they
rose above aspens silhouetted
darkly along the horizon on one side of
the beaver pond and watch
them disappear in pine shadow on
the other. The pond was like a hole
of universe punched through the thin
plate of flat earth. In still waters you could
see the milky-way burn from one
bank to the other. A fish would set
a ring of ripples spreading across
the stars. Were those galaxies
gently rocked by the trout rising
to take a caddisfly laying eggs
on the Pleiades?
