Stars surround this mountain, a necklace

of teeth, tomorrow promises rattling
of spears. If I close my eyes, the stars the stars

the stars are empty, like the galeprayers of mariners.
Tonight the moon crests these ridges masquerading

as clouds, peaks through these clouds masquerading
as sauropod backs. Light leaks through the colander

of heaven, and the darkness hides distinction. If tonight
were to whisper to us, would it sound like rumblestrips

on the side of highway 64? Like grainy spurts heard
on radio stations programmed hundreds of miles away?

We all seek harbor. The anchorage the anchorage
the anchorage is full of seabirds. The sky is full

of shading, shoals of clouds/ridges, migratory,
darkness where hours before the sky was the belly

of a coho. One night like tonight I’ll be dead. The Milky Way
will have one more pilgrim on hajj. I’m more aware

that one morning the eyes of all my loved ones
will fill with the emptiness of a tide-tossed trout

and these same stars will cross these same ridges
and this same mountain dressed as a witch doctor.

Tonight I am full with an emptiness
only the setting of stars can fill.