Backyard

 

Backyard

All our white sheets are left to bleach
outside. The wind makes them cold,
even in summer. Water, as shiny
as chrome, worms along the lower edge.
Having escaped evaporation, it now
must deal with gravity and the hungry Earth.

And the Sun, furry behind vague clouds,
is the perfect clerk, with an eye for pilferage.
All these are in its inventory, accounted
for and in accurate balance:
sheet, water, gravity, air.

My clothesline was a radio telescope.
Yours was a fragile craft set sail
to catch the solar wind molecule
by molecule, and farther and farther
away from gravity and the boy
who raised his hand across the yard.