The Drunken Comet

Every comet I have seen
suffers itself like a poor drunk,
even in the purest night

in no-place, Idaho, its tail
skirting away to drift finer
than the moonless film

of star clutter, or even when
I was someplace, Tennant,
California, with my lover, in

perfect December-cold air,
even when the comet, meriting
only some numb matrix

of letters and numbers, failed
to pierce any magnitude
beyond the puffs of our breathing.

What good is any comet,
especially the sober ones
that burn close to the sun

tiding the earth with light,
except for the celestial fact
everyone knows: a comet

is a dirty snowball? And so
I cherish the drunken comet,
the less universal disappointment

that will come as I point
to some nebula still unspinning
itself, and I say, "I think

that’s it, Kimberly," knowing
I am wrong, way wrong, knowing
that she is leaving me, knowing

that the night and its weight
of every star of this winter
solstice might kill me ere long,

ere the return of a true comet
that would alight every
nerve of the dead and blind them.

*next*