After singles send volleys
like flower bouquets;
before pitch-dark couples
burn empties and plates;
only at dusk, some say,
can Venus be seen.
Its day as long as a year,
we seek the star-like place,
red and warm so we believe,
with its twin moons (mostly wrong),
a world shrouded and smaller
than our own (partly right),
but our line of sight turns
from the sum of these.
Pine trees make better
stargazers, old hammocks too:
these frames, these limbs—they sway
with skies and shapes, they hold
the bare of spinning bodies too,
their threaded hands somehow
let slip the rest.
