You wake me to Jupiter so bright,
aligned with four more planets: Saturn, Mars
Venus and Mercury. When the moon sets,
those other worlds glow. All night barred
owls call back and forth from palms and pines.
Breeze off the Everglades brushes our skin like moth wings,
carries scent of mud from mangrove swamps.
So far to Jupiter, yet the planets tonight
are as close as our bodies on this blanket
where we lie three feet above sea level.
Palm fronds tick in the wind,
for a while owls still call as clouds turn pink.
It doesn’t matter much on Jupiter
that Earth’s polar ice melts
or Florida slips undersea.
Planets and stars fall to the horizon.
A storm blows on Jupiter
older than all of our history—
Love, I hope we can survive
for one more night.
George Longenecker’s poetry has been published or is forthcoming in Main Street Rag, Poetry Quarterly, Haight Ashbury Literary Journal, Two Cities Review, Saranac Review and War, Literature & the Arts. He lives in Middlesex, Vermont, where the woods and birds inspire his poetry.