CEREMONIES IN TIME AND SPACE*
by David Radavich
A night sky. The dark fields
recumbent yet alert.
Jupiter glistens in the constellation
Sagittarius: Hope for a new age.
Overhead, unseen,
a space station orbits connected
by computers, broadcasts,
two former enemies
locked together
coupling, de-coupling
now like first-time lovers,
strange, not awkward,
somehow natural,
to be hoped for again
Elsewhere the riots continue,
bombings, and the hatred
of another face,
another body unlike
our own, blood and last
breath on every city
and neighborhood visited
day and night
without rest
around
the visible globe
The overhead lovers,
exuberant, exhausted, converted
to a new faith, new rite
in the summer
atmosphere, feel
surprised
when the visible triumphs
over the invisible
The stars in the night,
far away, puncture the darkness.
*Celebrating the first docking of the Space Station Mir and U.S. Space Shuttle
Published in By the Way: Poems Over the Years (1998); rpt. Greatest Hits (2000).