Night Sky

by K. Alma Peterson

Waiting for dark to simplify my view

I stand and study wild quinine in the meadow
its bright white flowers bear upon resilience.

Bluestem grasses sweep and swerve between

bursts of lupine cropping up like decades-old
conversations, images of what we wore, where

we drove, when I knew you were my ground.

It all takes place on this heath of consciousness:
swales where details flatten like blown grasses,

where petals plucked declare the place and time

where loss provoked was loss sustained,
memory mistaken for something hard-and-fast.

Thoughts are fireflies and reality is the night sky.