Staying Out All Night

Well, Einstein, things are different now.
Late at night out walking,
you can hear God rattling the dice,
casting bones against Orion's feet.

Odd evenings on radio command
Sputnik's sibs cascade into the high thin air--
faint burning streaks,
the Perseids, but obsolete.

Late, in the wind, the shortwave noise of stars
is telling me Nothing  Nothing Nothing
and I'm not
too slow to learn the easy ones like that.

Walking at three in the morning
the bleak has a life of its own.
At daylight I'll swear out a warrant:
Certainty's gone missing, answers to Probability when called.

Scott Murphy

This photograph was created with support to Space Telescope Science Institute, operated by the Association of Universities for Research in Astronomy, Inc., from NASA contract NAS5-26555 and is reproduced with permission from AURA/STScI. Digital renditions of images produced by AURA/STScI are obtainable royalty-free at http://marvel.stsci.edu/

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