Stars and Stuff

Brass monkey weather – high
on Dunstable Downs, spotting
shooting stars. From a thermos
in his car, we drank hot chocolate...
then he made fun of my ‘moustache’;
the spitting image of Hitler's. Grass –
damp with evening rain as we sat...
writing poems on each other’s backs,
like a lazy southern drawl...we
who spoke of love with the body’s slang
and the rhyme of the heart.

A perfect night – we scoured the skies,
as the clouds, finally, broke;
he taught me all the constellations –
charting our course, as a mariner,
his craft, through a spangled sea.
“There – on the horizon is the Plough,”
he said. “Overhead, it’s Orion,
the hunter. That line of three stars
is his belt, and watch Sirius flash
orange, red and green!”

No shooting stars for us, but what
did we care? We’d made it to the moon
at least, yet never left the back-seat
of his 1953, sprayed yellow, Chevrolet.
How much we loved each other, then...
still do, I guess, but the older we get
things change; like the where, the why,
and the when.