all the way to just about there

Four in the morning
and things missing from my bloodstream
are clanging through my veins

in a rowdy protest of longing.
Outside it’s no better—
an all-night rager at the neighbor’s:

            the endless rise and swell
            of cars along the highway below

            slick serpents hissing their discontent
            slithering along in angry pursuit
            of the missing.

Higher up the drone of airplanes
drilling through the night.
They appear to be flying

but they’re just falling along the curve of the Earth
            homesick for her primal pull
            displacing air for the absent.

            Once there was an astronaut
who fell in love with longing
the endless quest for perfection.
She put miles of achievement behind her
            feeding an emptiness that fueled her
            through the darkness
and crashed headlong into madness.

            Even in space
            the thing that’s missing
            weighs heavy on the heart.

So satellites, like distant cries
race along under the skin of night
in search of connection

decipherable contact
with the invisible

            and anyone who’s ever lost anything
            is awake with me tonight
            dragging our tin cups
            across the bars of our loss

while the free and untethered continue
            barreling through the dark
            hoping to spill out into the light

                        and weightlessness

                                    at last.