Craters
With two tails—one white, curved (yours),
other blue, flat (sorta mine),
brighter than the cratered moon
here comes comet Hale-Bopp
named like an old doo-wop song.
Passes over a Pacific beach,
tingles us with wonder.
A rock (we learn later)
five times larger than the heavenly body
that blasted Chicxulub Crater
with a boom that shook the planet,
wiped out the lumbering dinosaurs.
Speaking of extinctions
and planetary collisions
we decide holding hands
at that moment, on that beach
to go home and get pregnant. Again.
If possible. At ages 48, 49. Insane.
Scared shitless but really at heart
we get that warm flush feeling--
mushy in the head. How sweet it feels.
Felt.
After 2,500 years Hale-Bopp will return.
Please fly by, don’t strike our planet.
After fewer years we have returned
to this beach, salty breeze, water
from which all life emerged
pulled by tides of a moon
that humans fly by, snapping photos.
The child today would be 28 years old.
Some craters form in silence.
Joe Cottonwood can’t help it. He’s drawn to mountains and a more hardscrabble way of life. From Maryland at the foot of Appalachian ridges, he settled in the Santa Cruz Mountains of California among wildfire, redwoods, and the occasional lion.
With two tails—one white, curved (yours),
other blue, flat (sorta mine),
brighter than the cratered moon
here comes comet Hale-Bopp
named like an old doo-wop song.
Passes over a Pacific beach,
tingles us with wonder.
A rock (we learn later)
five times larger than the heavenly body
that blasted Chicxulub Crater
with a boom that shook the planet,
wiped out the lumbering dinosaurs.
Speaking of extinctions
and planetary collisions
we decide holding hands
at that moment, on that beach
to go home and get pregnant. Again.
If possible. At ages 48, 49. Insane.
Scared shitless but really at heart
we get that warm flush feeling--
mushy in the head. How sweet it feels.
Felt.
After 2,500 years Hale-Bopp will return.
Please fly by, don’t strike our planet.
After fewer years we have returned
to this beach, salty breeze, water
from which all life emerged
pulled by tides of a moon
that humans fly by, snapping photos.
The child today would be 28 years old.
Some craters form in silence.
Joe Cottonwood can’t help it. He’s drawn to mountains and a more hardscrabble way of life. From Maryland at the foot of Appalachian ridges, he settled in the Santa Cruz Mountains of California among wildfire, redwoods, and the occasional lion.
