It’s hanging behind us.  Blue ball.  White feathery clouds.  It glows out of the black.  Darkness crusted around it, spreading out everywhere.  Thick black.  But we penetrate, metal speeding through the opaque molasses of space.

On Sundays and Saint’s Days, he wears
his cloister’s black and white,
hikes his hem to the handle bars and billows
like a striped sail, rising and falling
along the prairie highway, tacking
the green swells of tall grass
on his squeaking Schwinn.