the fox the sheep the dog the goat

with a mighty swirl

Poem built from snippets of old text. I cut the image of Cetus out of Flamsteed’s “Atlas Coelestis” (graciously digitized and provided online by the Linda Hall Library), and I colored in the black-and-white image with eyeshadow.  Background is handmade Japanese paper.

Familiarity

Close-up of some of the circumpolar constellations (Ursa Major, Ursa Minor, Draco) from Burritt’s “Geography of the Heavens”; I blacked out the original image with chalks.

I hold certain things
circumpolar

and pass them–
too dear to part with–
from hand to hand

in a tight
vigil.

This is love
as Tethys and I know it–

our section of sky
heavy with
the familiar
curving day and night

because we make it so

our weighted hands
brushing
the horizon.