Skywatching

August, & the empty catbird nest catches small walnuts that will never hatch. An early autumn chill settles into my kneecaps. Last night, a cricket made entirely of electrons haunted a cross-continental audio connection between computers. It sped up & slowed down according to no change in temperature that anyone could discern. Thus, perhaps, the Great Motherboard amuses herself. Today at sunset the sky was full of chimney swifts, & I watched them for a while because it’s the height of the Pleiades, & this was likely the only skywatching I would do. Swifts are well named. The clouds turned orange above them while they weaved & wheeled. For whose chimney were they the wayward smoke? And in the morning, sometimes the sun finds a hole in the wall of trees opposite my porch & blinds me for half a minute before inching upward. Then wherever I look I see its negative: dark suns swimming in a cloudless blue.