It is 1979:
Voyager 1 and 2 float
forever and photographed
to chart the influence of one
mistress
at the pillow, it is late
at night when I remember
the picture of 1 and 2
in glossy rectangular suspension.
I let the weight
of my consciousness
press into the pillow,
and then it is I who flies weightless
in dream. In sleep I push
the comforter smooth
over my body
as if hermetic suit. Warm
and alone
I dream.
Space is as good
a place as any—
way out in space
next to comets,
salt-sized black holes
that weigh ten million kilograms,
there is also love.
And here
as good a place as any
for my pillow.
I dream
in 1979, with an eye on Io,
her magnificent
magnetosphere; and Jupiter
is cool, dense;
all the while Io orbits
his center, gets hot.
I dream
in 1979: Io’s nine conical peaks
reach from that hot astral body
as breasts might; yes, they conduit
but instead of streaming milk they are
hurling from her core at Jupiter
kibrit, in other words
million degree
sulfuric belch fire
since the beginning
of their circuitous tryst, and after this hot conduit
her skin drops off
to a cool, composed
negative one hundred forty three degrees C;
orbiting around
the pillow
the Voyagers snap
in twin pictures of my dream
to send in 1979
from the space between me and my pillow
all the way back here:
where one salt grain
can be thrown for luck.
Space snatched in photograph
from my pillow
in 1979 for curious eyes
that wonder when we wander
way out next to salt-sized
black holes that weigh
ten million kilograms,
way out in hermetic dark,
way out between
me and my pillow,
is this as good a place
as any?