View from the Night Garden, where the moonshadows grow

From here
you can see so far into the Milky Way
it feels as though we are standing inside it,
that snaking and eddying river of stars.
Which we are.
How easy it is
in the dizziness
to recall being told that we are built of stardust:
particles of the river
stuck together in 6.5 billion different ways
and somehow
lit from within this time.

Down the Rabbit Hole

Hurtling toward old age with blinding speed
and an auspicious lack of grace
I grasp at moments as they dance by,
determined to break the inevitability of my fall.
There goes the moment in which you were a toddler,
and without you I would have been
the loneliest person on earth.
There goes the moment we caught chickens together
and another one where I read aloud to you in the hammock
in the dappled summer sun.
Here is us picking apples in the autumn rain.
Here is us lifting boxes of produce from the truck to the dock
and from the dock into the boat.
Here are a thousand crossings of the Salish Sea
with the salt spray sticky on my face.
I knock them all which-way
in my frenzied haste -
there must be something with more cushion to it,
something with some anti-lock brakes
to control the spin -
Ah! Here it is!
You take my hand
and the free-fall grinds into a retard
so slow I cannot determine the movement,
as I focus on your smile. Your eyes.
This now.