out back counting stars

out back
counting
stars, lying
back on a
swing,
staring
up -
trying to
stir feelings
of being afloat
on the open sea
in a dinghy perhaps,
just a rucksack to
take short naps.

the metal bar
holding the
swing takes
away from
the illusion
a bit, but
the
   rocking
       motion
slight back
and forth...

seeing the
stars and
wondering
(briefly) if
the moon
is hollow
and there
are under-
ground
mountains
to explore and
climb and bide
my time -

lazily
scaling
stars one
at a time and
binary ones
are flung
to and
fro
only
rarely -
not a celestial
necessity even
with the black-
hole around.

the milky
way weighs
on my mind -
the vastness of
it, the way it
sprawls out
and we're in
the suburbs
hoping the
spinning
mass of
matter
doesn't
collide
with
another
mass of matter and it
doesn't matter much
if there's no trust, no
faith as it were.

as we were
where we
were were
we? really?

free-
dom
of
space.

time-
less-
ness