Isti Mirant Stella
I’m telling you about my favorite panel,
the one with Halley’s Comet dragging its tail
across the sky like an aerial advertisement,
its pin-wheeled head radiating omens
inches above the city’s crenellations.
Linen men are pointing at their wonderment,
at the comet, at the letters sutured to the sky
I’m also pointing to—which is both the why
and the what I’m telling you. How size and time
can wrap us in a paralyzing knot
that we can ever only try to mime
our way free of, pulling ourselves until we’re taut
to the point of breaking, pointing there—there
dragging our fingers across tapestries of air.