You’ve been light-year fast-balling your fire my way
for billions of years. And I’m out here in the mundane dark
throwing a hard chunk of Planet Earth right back at you.
Not trying to drive you off. Not defending myself.
Simply aiming at a dream, wishing for twinklings
of your ancient, expansive knowledge.
I don’t know why these primitive animals around me
fixate on coin, on fritzed-up connections
beyond the den, the pack. We really aren’t much bigger
or warmer than shared fur. My craving
is to pond-skip a piece of translucent quartz
up through your brilliant dance and beam,
your blessed curvature of time. If I’m lucky,
my hunger for turning things back to simplicity
with a mathematically perfect ripple might actually
become real. I aim for the resting of Andromeda.
But–a military/communications satellite
spins and glows across my path, halting
my inadequate arm. Meanwhile there’s an angry
barking from the family room of that dark and ugly
McMansion next door, making its way through
their three-car garage, someone tosses
glass toward its breaking point against the walls.
A forked pitch rises in my grip—I hold
river-smoothed rocks in my hands. All I desire:
to throw true and blot one of you out
for a brief quixotic moment, before
your sweet light bleeds back in. That’s the way
I see things. That’s my violent hope.
I don’t want to aim lower—but I might.
Scot Hutchinson’s previous work has appeared in Northeast Narrative, Naugatuck River Review, and The Southern Review. Poems are forthcoming in Appalachian Heritage, Blue Collar Review, Floyd County Moonshine, and Pine Mountain Sand & Gravel. A new book of poetry, Moonshine Narratives, is available from Main Street Rag Publishing.
