Still Life with Roof Prism
A country bend: beneath the near-full moon tonight,
I kneel with Sam and steer the borrowed telescope’s
objective to the maria and Tycho’s crater. Here,
in the palm of my hand, like an alabaster coin,
white light emerges from its folded path: out of the sun,
carom off the great gray spattered face, threading the array
of lenses and roof prism. Like a sliced pat of sodium,
chalk-white, under oil. A fast oxidizer. Like cash
on the barrelhead, franked and coined, a thimbleful
of daylight. Held there long enough, imagine: it marks me.
