We Are In The Sky Now

Nine days before you left for India,

Bethany invited us over for dinner with the family-

grilled portabellas in balsamic, roasted 

sweet potatoes in rings like little sliced tree

trunks, and simmered spicy collards (the family

recipe she saved just for us). We dined

outside in her Atlanta backyard on a table

adorned with dripping white candles, a votive

gesture of thanks.

Her 7-year-old hated the mushrooms.

Her husband smoked a bowl and offered us 

the green. The harvest moon hung low enough

to run our fingertips along its dusted surface, 

and the child, pushing aside their blond 

hair asked, “How is the moon in the sky?”

The husband, so graceful then, explained 

how gravity and inertia kept the planets

and their moons from drifting apart. 

I looked at you, but you were already 

across the world.

The kid, eyes like Neptune, whispered, 

“. . . we are in the sky now.”

I wish I was high, or still a child for this kind of wonder,

that even now we are spaceborne, spinning

1,000 miles per hour,

and somehow scientific

properties can keep your plane suspended

in the atmosphere but carry you 

away from me. The ants

on the table carry

crumbs on their backs.

A particle of space dust incinerates

in the atmosphere.