Ida Fasel
Cosmic
He is locked into silver cloth --
“Nylon
full body suit with torso and leg
zippers.”
He sports the pockets with his hands,
the flag and shuttle patches with a face
of secure joy. Even before the
package came,
before the earlier cap (”Feel like a
high flier
wearing our bold navy gold trim
hat!”)
he had an instinct for upper air and could
get
ground level to yield between thumb and
forefinger,
with sputter and zoom and intricate sweeps
of the guiding arm. He’s
outgrown kites.
He likes to accomplish things.
Airborne,
he shouts to me along with sound effects,
bound for a star somewhere in the North
Latitude,
flight plan from the constellation viewer,
a present, like all his toys,
from the Smithsonian catalog.
Light years away, he comes aloft
his graham bears and milk, happy for a
touch
of earth so far from it, and a stowaway
beside him
to shore up his first meeting with aliens.
Cracking Open a Geode
If you can draw the stone, you can draw
anything
John Ruskin
We found it just short of the corner pine,
where snow rests safe and still
past calendar spring,
among rare red columbine, mullein,
bush wispy yellow clover...
wildness with some finesse,
gifts too from space.
They say cracking open a heavenly
body’s
hard shell exposes the wealth inside.
Its crevices bore the deep cut
of ancient ink, like Hebrew letters
century to century in narrative.
I wanted to break in right away. I
saw
facing choirs of clustered amethysts:
mineral wonders, gems, small songs
of themselves scored for passage
long as a journey across China.
They waited for light of the open
to turn their light side to
and turn their dark side from
the world they newly illuminated.
I babbled treasurable expectations.
You stood
in your age of reason and spoke of odds.
But as you prepared to strike and I
to cover my eyes, the stone walls glowed
azure-violet in all the nuances
of light and shade and shade’s
shade.