Poetry Explorer- Classic Contemporary Poetry, SATURN OVER PISGAH, by STEPHEN CRAIG KNAUTH


Poetry Explorer

Classic and Contemporary Poetry

SATURN OVER PISGAH, by                    
First Line: Can you hear them tonight
Subject(s): Passion; Saturn (planet)


Can you hear them tonight,
big sisters hissing in the void?
Can you, in your dreams, while
I explore the mysterious delta
at the bend of your left knee?
I know nothing but your breathing
here on Pisgah's floor,
our fire progressing to embers.
Asleep, I can ask you now,
Doesn't some part of us go on?
Memory, regret, anger, pride --
what wheels will they turn?
Your mercy, what loom?
Last night, during the lunar eclipse,
we saw Saturn through a borrowed scope,
saw the toy beast for the first time.
Saw Jupiter, too, tiny with its tiny moons
lined up in a straight corner shot.
Forty-five years it took me to focus,
to feel Saturn alive inside me,
cardboard rings transformed to golden ice,
to stroke Jupiter's stormy face,
whirling without us for a billion years.
Asleep, I can ask you, How?
Sometime between midnight and dawn,
a light plane passes overhead,
coals of a hundred campfires visible below.
The plane banks slowly to the west.
What will our passion become?

Copyright © Stephen Knauth
http://www.unl.edu/schooner/psmain.htm
Prairie Schooner is a literary quarterly published since 1927 which
publishes original stories, poetry, essays, and reviews. Regularly cited in the
prize journals, the magazine is considered one of the most prestigious of the
campus-based literary journals.







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