After Hearing There Are Only

7,000 Stars Visible To The Naked Eye

With its better eyes does the housecat

cry beneath the majesty

of 70,000 stars? Does the owl

climb into a rabbit’s back

underneath a hailstorm of light?

How many pictures could I make

with more stars

and how many different stories?

This is what I wonder

below my own wedge of sky,

interrupted by maple branch and roof top,

the air smudged with what escapes

from so many streetlamps

 and passing cars. A soul

could starve in this impoverished light —

a less fabulous infinity

than what we need

after so many bone-bright days.

—Charles Rafferty,

from A Less Fabulous Infinity