Member Poem

I'm sitting at a stop sign

World black and bold and spinning around me

The stars like pinpricks of light

Holes in the sky revealing

another side

another place

another version of what could be.

There is a stillness, though,

In all that spinning

The low hum of the engine

Of my favorite car

I turn the radio down

And stare at the Little Dipper.

No traffic;

The country allows me time

A pause

To breathe in the summer air

Dry and glinting off of the asphalt

Crackling through the corn stalks

Brushing up against my cheeks

Like warm, silver palms.

I smile

And listen

Feeling where I am

So deeply and suddenly and surely

That it's impossible to stop looking up

To stop imagining what it would be like

if I reached into the soft velvet of the sky

And poked my fingers through those bright holes

would it be sharp,

I wonder,

or maybe cool and brittle

the other version

the other place

the other side of now.