I have stood alone in the dark

I have stood alone in the dark

The warmth of the day

Not yet melted

Looking up at the sky

Wondering why the tail of a comet

Was so very difficult to see

How long before

The ice boils away

What then would be

The focus of an astronomer?

What do they see

When they look at me

As still as an image

Waiting for a miracle

That has never happened

Other than how half a glass

Of spilt wine

Can redecorate an entire room.

The inside is always bigger

Than the outside,

It is a rule.

Snow flurries can be beautiful

I wonder why it is much better to remember them

In the abstract

Than to be frozen out by the cold.

On a night like this

As the stars shimmer in anticipation

Of an addition

There is disappointment

In the discovery of Mars

So small against the velvet.

But tracing the backdrop

Remembering the instruction

Leads me back

To the comet

The sting in its tail.

Sadly not a star of wonder

Just a lonely traveller

Winding elliptically

Pointlessly predictably

Slowly boiling away

Through the millennia

Until there is nothing

Left but the grounds

Grouped like tea leaves,

Who will be there to read them

When Sol blinks out.