Nebraska Skies

You can see stars here
even in town.
I'm not just talking about a few constellations,
a few brighter stars, and Venus, and Mars
I mean all of them.

A sky so vast and star-filled
that the stars almost obscure themselves
constellations run into each other
and the milky way makes a road across the sky
that you are almost sure you can walk on.

Things are clearer here
and higher
and proof of God is in the night air
in the clean breeze and sweet breaths
that you'd swear is the smell of stars.

For those of us who have to leave,
we want to bottle it all up and take it with us
the smell, the stars, the revelation
we want to pack it in a memory or a poem
as if a bottle of glass or ink could hold it.

5/9/04