On Sleeping Under the Stars in an Untethered Canoe

by Karen Massey

Long nights carrying, muscled against mauve-black sky;

years

wobble tightropes wired between pine scent & woodsmoke.

Do you remember how to recline on glacier-scarred rock,

to focus starward,

touch the plush grapefruit moon?

Dreamer, you thumbed rides to every mythic & animal

constellation,

butted heads with galaxies, tasted the taunt: expansiveness.

Even clouds release their static, reshape sooty histories.

All of this living has led to cascading refinements of the

now.

You want to lie open under starlight, a whisper afloat on its risk;

to wake rested, nestled inside the ribs of something vast.