From the Fishouse

what you’d expect.
In the Germanic, it is obvious.
Still, those big cosmic names
nuzzling at the start of it: blunt stunning.

Kids riding home on school buses
share or secret this knowledge away
in every awkwardly awed generation.

Nothing properly prepares us
for the really big things:

those burning meteors we expect,
that never fly back on us, that rarely
even fly too close,
yet get our gasps.

Sometimes we couch the sun in grand terms
saying “orb” and “chariot.”
But we all know
sun means precisely sun and squint and bright
right now shining down—
not pulling away
at the ass-end of a god-drawing horse.

But it is understatement in preparation
for the next awe and awe again.

We know better than processionals of sky
but jump like the fish,
the bugs, the buds at its beck and world-twirling call.
A warm snap and the earth is busting
with our swarming to each other
to be seen and acknowledge the sky is higher
than we thought.