Northern Sky

On the only clear night in July

we walked all the way to the edge

of the quarry

and watched the northern sky.

A comet had come

too late for a proper portent,

an exclamation mark,

pointing down in surprise

at our catastrophe.

Life, you said,

is just one disaster after another

but somehow it manages to be beautiful

anyway.

The next morning, I talked to my grandma

on the phone, not in person,

because she is dying

as we are all dying

and managing somehow

to live in the spaces between what we’ve lost.

In my garden there is a sunflower.

Its seeds, tight-packed, make a spiral.

I trace the shape

to the center.

My finger pauses.

I trace the spiral back again,

from center to the edge.

Libbie Grant

July 16, 2020