A 70-STAR CONSTELLATION
Some spy the night sky
hunting dippers and bears,
but the moons he's roofed into,
the seventh decade of his earthly years,
have taken him in as he has them,
pounding without ceasing, keeping
a roof over his family's heads.
Securing his staging higher
and ever higher, he has earned
the constellation they see as his.
Roll after tarred roll, shingle
by glinting shingle, he has nailed down
his spirit which is to say nailed up,
giving all he has had to give
before turning to death. Worrying,
his wobbly wife takes up her kind
of night-hued felt, snips a black
silhouette top to their old ark
with its yee-yaw chimneys and eaves,
and hand stitches it across her
twilight's blue, neat as he's worked his
rows his whole life. Then sews
70 glittering specks, silver-cored glass
aurora borealis seed-beads, into a risen
Ladder and Hammer overhead
amidst a scattered starry surround
to show him how wondrous
he is to them, and what they, hereafter,
will see sparkling in the universe
he has repaired and repaired and repaired.