The Greater She-Bear
I’m up late to watch intermittent meteor
showers flick across night,
International Space Station breaststroke
the Big Dipper. A perfume of starlight
rides a far-flung skyline.
So much happening out there,
in the soup bowl of evening.
An apology of bats swirls the atmosphere—
fireflies twirl the wake like phosphorescence
on deep water. I trace the path with one finger,
connect dots with stars, draw Ursa Major.
I will name a future child ‘Callisto’
and watch in quiet despair
as her feet sink below the horizon.
The cat trots up the unlit driveway,
crying for attention. I tell him about Jupiter.
I tell him about the cosmos. Unimpressed,
he waits by the door—all comfortable things
crave inside familiarity. All gods require revenge.
One last meteor streaks past my sight,
dissolves into emptiness.
Sirens rise and fall in the distance,
fade by degrees.
I desire the silence of space.
The Greater She-Bear ladles out patience,
promises me a spiral galaxy to call my own.
Constance Brewer
Constance Brewer’s poetry has appeared in Blood, Water, Wind, and Stone: An Anthology of Wyoming Writers, Crafty Poet II: A Portable Workshop, Harpur Palate, Dark Matter Literary Journal, The Nassau Review, and in the New Poets of the American West anthology among other places. Constance is an editor for Gyroscope Review magazine, a contemporary poetry quarterly. She is also the recipient of a 2016 Wyoming Arts Council Fellowship grant in poetry. Constance lives Wyoming with a small but vocal herd of Welsh Corgis. You can find her on Facebook, Twitter @ConstanceBrewer, and also at www.constancebrewer.com.