Through a telescope
there’s nothing more to see
than a pinkish mote
between patchworks of stardust
and galaxies, but they say
you’re an important dwarf planet
on a thousand-year swing
around the sun. It must be
ferociously lonely out there,
eight billion miles past Pluto
in icy space filled
with multitudes of empty space.
Do you ever watch a comet
ghost by and make big plans
for the future? Do you ever squint
at far-flung pinpoints
and wonder how gravity
holds everything in place?
Down here it’s not that different
so when another storm
pinwheels through and damp
seeps from stone walls
into bone, the only good way
to survive is as honey bees do
in their six-sided bedrooms
where they press close
in the dark and sing.
— from Juniper Volume 2, Issue 3