Terri Brown-Davidson – Ⅰ

Astronomy Lesson: A Sonnet

 

 

 

 

 

We ruminate, crouch, our drenched, dirty sneakers

rooted in wet grass. Mei Li’s eye looms luminous,

pupil blackening, before she trains it against the lens.

“I can’t see anything,” she whispers. Fidgeting, she sucks her mouth,

though I glimpse, inches away, a cold white presence

smeared palpating against glass. Her father, muttering, approaches,

angles his head down, flirts with grainy shadows: a blue-

rimmed, murky iris; the black, crumpled matte of his gorgeously

dense eyelashes. I breathe and breathe again,

caress the telescope with sweating hands,

swing past the porchlight of our cobwebbed adobe dump.

One second’s quickening flash. Ascension:

the moon brightens violently: her craters warm my mouth; I swallow

phosphoresence. Her hot, pale face floats skyward then wanes to black.