After summer solstice, mind skips troposphere,
wanders stratosphere where planes soar, leaps
up to exosphere—like it, I contract & expand
with the flares of time, the curling lazuli
& shooting blond of solar storms, & the slim
ribbons of stellar streams.

All around me silence peals in waves of nothing
a tin-tin-na-bu-la-tion tin-tin-na-bu-la-tion
like the copper cattail chimes
as they wave by our pond
in a rare June wind.

Far under my feet
sun sets in the narrow band
of a honey-&-pink horizon, preens
before evanescing below maple & redbud
where katydids purl with sliding wings & leaf bodies.

From now until the thinning ends of September,
I weed in mornings, water in evenings, mind
drifting up to afternoons—through the pane of blue
peppered with clouds & shot through with glints
of gold, a glaze of heat on blade & leaf & bloom
& brow—up to stellar nurseries,

where novas brighten into being,
forget-me-nots bursting,
then bending over
bog with faces
of sky.