Although I’m telling them once more the sun
is larger than the Earth and the moon smaller,
that large sources of light cast two-toned shadows
beyond small objects, they refuse to remember.

I’ve joined those other teachers trying to show them
everything that’s known about erring stars,
who’ve graded them slightly down for believing in something
else out of their dream-filled-love for the sky.

If they won’t puzzle out the solar system,
why should I scold them? Neither would Sherlock Holmes
or the wisest wise men before Copernicus.
They all settled for nests of crystal spheres.

Emerson said a kind of light shines through us
and makes us aware we’re nothing. “Nothing” seems wrong.
We transmit something or other. We interfere.
Cosmically speaking, we have a nuisance value.

And nobody knows why, not even today,
not even the first that rounded the sun-kissed moon,
tongue-tied with wonder, garbling old testaments,
just barely raising moondust while sleepwalking.

Though the Earth has caught our moon in the outer cone
of its double shadow for a while this evening,
at dawn the sun will make up for lost time
by spinning fire around all daughters of men.