There are many ways to love the stars  

There are many ways to love the stars.
One way is to love women, books, and Jazz first.
One doesn’t need a telescope to love the stars…
telescopes are rusty hinges – throw them out.
A night of screwing under the belt of Orion
Is worth a thousand hours at the eyepiece.
As is reading Neruda at dusk when clothes are off and ears are on.
Or cuing up Coltrane when
It’s last call and the brandy’s gone and there’s nothing between you and the Pleiades but the Courvoisier breath of a mehjure named Stella.
Ah, those are the nights.
The bigness and the pettiness – all at the same time.
And when she tells you that beauty has no origin,
That it existed before Scorsese,
Before Coltrane,
Before Chinaski,
Before wet grass, volcanism, and hurricanes,
Before the earth, before the universe even,
You believe her…
after she kisses you deeply under an unfamiliar constellation.
and you don’t believe all that astrology crap either.
New age wishful thinking claptrap you say.
And maybe you’re right, but she’s a Pisces and you’re an Aquarian.
And who cares anyways.
And you may find yourself in a grass field at night,
laying on your back,
Stella at your side, she’s holding your hand,
looking up with you, sometimes at you.
In your discreet exchanges you feel
A slight intrusion.
You notice the poke of grass on your back,
The saxophone that is you and this woman,
The ink of your selves and the earth,
the drama of the cosmos above you.
From where you are, those things feel the same.
You want to say something profound, but
Instead you shut up and enjoy her philosophy.
You turn to her and whisper “go……”

© 2006 Mike Gravel