New Telescope by Kelli Russell Agodon

                         I may never be happy, but tonight I am content.
Sylvia Plath

She turned knobs all evening.

Still the telescope remained
unfocused on the powder
of a satellite, a blur:
a moon, a moth.

Open maps of craters
papered the earth.

Bats looped from treetop
to treetop.  She focused
full—attention—what was that?

A gunshot? Imagine,

someone’s last sight—a clear night
and the halo of the moon. Or not.

A car backfired and a new galaxy
created from its exhaust. Clouds
appeared like curtains.

She aimed the scope at a star
with a name like Cancer or Columba,

or maybe she caught a plane
settling in the distance.

Her elbow slammed the tripod
and the telescope rocked,
reconnected with the earth.

Gravity-loving, sturdy little thing.

Through the eyepiece she peered
towards what she believed was Bliss
or Dove, jagged craters
sharpening one after another.

From: http://superstitionreview.asu.edu/issue3/poetry/kelliagodon

Date: 2009

By: Kelli Russell Agodon (1969- )