-3-
Our rockets blasted off. Binary stars rose. People were lonely in space. They tried to make friends, they really did. Of course they told stories, but it didn't matter because in space everything else mattered too much. Who would have guessed? You? Weightless too long, now you can barely lift a phaser to your temple.

-2-
Squeeze. Nothing happens. Stare in mild perplexity down the crystalline barrel, squeeze again and this time you incinerate your left ear and open the predictable hole in the hull of the vessel. Yes you—the last person on Earth to drink beer by engulfing the top of the bottle in your mouth, instead of pressing it gently onto your pursed and thirsty lips.

-1-
Remember when Colonel Alexis Leonov left the capsule and floated in space for ten minutes at the end of a light line? The general public was greatly impressed by the spectacular and emotional aspect of this sortie into the void. From the loudspeaker his voice crackled: "The vast cosmos is visible to me in all its indescribable beauty; in the black sky the sun shines brilliantly, and I feel its warmth on my face through my helmet window."

- Lift Off-
And so when we open the lower panel, preparing to leave the capsule, drawing ourselves slowly through the airlock and with a light push moving away from the spacecraft, notice how the small ****** given as we leave imparts a slight angular motion to the capsule; see the vehicle rotating slowly below us; see the heavy door in the open position.

-Nothing-
Reassured by the hiss of oxygen, I began bicycling my legs in the void, moving away.  When the stars came to an end I said, "Ha! No more stars!" and bicycled onward.

-Worse-
I should never have slipped on the suit, never stared wide-eyed as the polycarbonate fishbowl was lowered over my freshly shaved head, never listened to the titanium neck ring slide and click into place.

-Nothing Without No-
One of those angelic flies on the hollow wall of our nowhere reports that we appear disoriented. Hemingway, however, recalls one of those picador's horses, seen from the upper tiers of the bullring, dragging a plume of their own entrails through the fine yellow sand of the arena.

Yes. Ride up the Yukon in winter –
No one to stop you.

I can see your tracks threading northward
and, once you start, it won't take so long

to get there, to the end, if it matters.
They say starting’s the hard part,

to get ready, tighten the straps,
test all your gear, all the training.

The winters have come and gone,
but the frozen river waits for you

to pedal through the deep snow,
because you will, now that you've started;

covered in ice, squinting in the glare,
and it was enough to keep pumping the legs,

filling the lungs, singing a song, to follow
the river north in the winter. Happy

to be there, in that blinding light,
with feet too frozen to start for home.

On a nameless lake
north of Nipigon
I saw a creature

up in the crown
of a burnt-out jack pine
watching me wonder:

should I go on, into the opening
cleared by the fire, or return?
I stayed at the edge,

half in the open,
afraid of a windigo;
I must have turned back

and paddled in,
over spruce bogs,
across Black Sturgeon Lake;

I must have come in,
tell me you saw me
come in.

All the good sports
         go out for a run
                       into the ice storm.

They grimace and squint
           in the headlights of cars
                       on Riverside Drive.

And they run as if for their lives
            in this freezing rain
                        that sheathes and has broken

the leafless branches
            along snow-plowed bike paths;
                          ice-pellets ping off
        
their pricy goggles, their fluorescent shells,
              as they struggle north
                           to the pole where

they always turn back
              for the Christmas lights strung
                       over the porches
              
welcoming home
               those who might have been
                        men.

Weaponized,
a Plymouth Fury
wallows up the off-ramp
oblivious to our toot-toot-*****,
dodging cars to disappear into
the onrush. Senile missiles,

our moms and dads
take aim through their confusion,
behind windshields, selfishly
they hog the right to their wrong-ways
and praying for decorum
cream the Firebirds.

Not because she told me
you and all your work were just a tree-fort
and to get inside one had to trust
the flimsiest of whining rungs
(nailed, nailed, and re-nailed in the trunk),
how the floors were rotten plywood,
a lattice-work of soggy two by fours,
conspiring to keep you in there,
until another backup plan unfolded;
but because you were the only one
to stay up there overnight,
when everybody promised that they’d come.

And there was nothing, really, up there
except you in your tree fort, as if
a life depended on it,
as if life depended on a life depending on it
as it did.

Deadfall

My palm warm on the trunk
of a drowned out jack pine,
I squint into the glare
and feel how the wind rides
the dead crown,
then I push and I push
until the heartwood
that has held up the rot cracks,
until the great crash
into this black swamp
brings forth a shrill
irrevocable silence.