Rachel

In between two named towns,

near a county line,

people of the Kansas Area Watershed gathered.

The night was darker than my usual dark

and the glory of the stars exceeded that of mine.

I had learned that roughly half the length of my lifetime

before the year of my birth,

a man named Hubble had seen for the first time

discernible galaxies beyond our own.

I stepped up to a fire,

the light surely not extending far,

faces I mostly did not know

glowing in reflected flickering orange.

As chance would have it,

I sought a spot out of the smoke

in a still and occasionally interrupted quiet.

A woman held out her hand;

I’m almost sure I would not recognize

her on the street tomorrow,

the shadows were stronger than the light,

but her voice was most beautiful.

To be precise, it was warm and welcoming

and we exchanged names.

Her family name quickly blurred in my memory,

our gazes were mostly drawn by the fire.

I took her hand for a moment

and let it go.

We talked easily of people and places

we both knew and cared about in time.

That is, she talked of people in places

I knew of,

and I talked of similar people in places

she might have recognized.

But none of us were strangers to what

we cared about

though our words were specific and particular

to what each of us knew.

If I meet her ever again,

I imagine I will recognize her

by firelight and her voice.

I will look for her,

somewhere,

in the Milky Way.