I.
On clear Kansas nights,
we drove out of town
to drink up on the prairie.
It was an unobstructed sky,
the light pollution of a city
100 miles east. We laughed
and sometimes talked about poetry.
I don’t remember seeing
a single moon.
II.
Clyde Tombaugh lived
188 miles west and slightly south.
The skies must have been
even darker there.
I wonder if he ever looked up
through his homemade scope
on a late fall night
while the sound of dry corn husks
scratched at his ear.
III.
I moved east.
Tombaugh moved west.
We each began to see things.
Tombaugh moved on to bigger
and better telescopes.
I looked through my first.
Slowly, a planet came into view
for both of us.
And somewhere in Kansas,
a wheat field was dancing with us.
tychogirl 