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Amid the Plough, Orion, Cassiopeia, a poem by Doris Lynch


Amid the Plough, Orion, Cassiopeia

Sometimes we assume the stars
have all the horses: plowers

of want, whinniers of need.
Eye-graze those silver orbs

miniaturized by distance,
dazzling light across the cosmos.

How improbably shaped constellations
are with their fiery suns, backward-

revolving moons, pastures of possibility.
In the Gaia wind, prance awhile, weave

your spiral hair over your cave ancestors,
pretend that they--Denisovans, Neanderthals--

now scattered bone relics and mud DNA,
will remember, be remembered.


Doris Lynch has recent work in Frogpond, Modern Haiku, Tipton Poetry Journal, and in the anthology Cowboys & Cocktails: Poetry from the True Grit Saloon.  The Indiana Arts Commission awarded her three individual artist's grants, and she has worked as a librarian and an Ivy-Tech creative writing instructor.