My comets are like cats.
They have long tails, and they
do precisely
what they want.
They sometimes follow
trails to Earth, gravel ones,
preferably en France
so they can be called by poètes
names such as Comète de la Chatte,
and be teased to answer.
I leave to astronomers
their Halleys and Hale-Bopps;
mine are rarer, more elusive;
they pass like lightning with quick
electric prints as tiny as firefly toes at dusk.

I go there across the footbridge
through a worn stone portal
in mid-afternoon, walk many hours
into the woods, le forêt. I wait
in the hushed understory
among bare, weeping vines
until dark, la nuit.

Then comes my little pet, ma petite,
and comes her light through the ice
and dust of inner space. I am
lost and found in exotic thought.
Quelle reverie! And to think it comes
there to me and I to it
beyond the mortised doorway
only a few steps away.
In eccentric orbit it pulls me
into its delicate, its très romantique
and far-flung, certainement.