A Truth About Loneliness

                                    for my brother.

When I moved to Colorado

the sky was the brightest 

blue I'd ever seen; 

crisp, cool, and lonely.

The mountains provided a 

semi-permeable edge

one went "into" or "through"

like madness.

My brother visited once, and we walked

miles over the foothills looking for

the film version of Tortilla Flat.

We found it near the University, 

and rewarded ourselves

with cheap beer and exhaustion.

Spencer Tracy was

brilliant. So was the lovely

Hedy Lamarr. Stepping outside 

after the film, I realized 

movies are liars, John Steinbeck 

is the truth, and my brother 

would leave soon. The sky, 

as always, was threatening

with its loneliness.

Juno

Even the night smelled like honeysuckle

with the wind out of the south just right. 

School had ended. Summer was limitless.

It would be a month before I had to undertake

the wholesale murder of Japanese beetles

for the sake of the daisies and 4 o'clocks.

After a long wait, news broke that 

NASA's space probe Juno was approaching Jupiter,

preparing to orbit the giant dozens of times.

I pictured a tiny craft circling, searching like 

beetles drowning in a bucket of water.

One night we crowded around the telescope 

just outside the streetlight pool at the driveway's end.

My son and a few of the neighborhood kids

were taking turns looking at the moon, then Jupiter.

One little boy, having spent a few moments looking,

lifted his head. "I think I saw an astronaut," he said

eyes wide, big smile, enjoying his exaggeration.

I bent to the eyepiece for another long look,

then nodded knowingly as if to verify his observation,

to verify a season of limitless possibilities.

We laughed as he ran off into the street

to catch up with his friends and the ridiculous freedom

that lives in the summertime darkness.