View From a Winter Window, abridged

past where the seven sisters laugh gladly,
beyond where they pass their days watching the satellites
move by in great bright streaks,
further still than where they sit in the picnic stars,
there is a queen on her throne, tall and proud
as a quiet old love, with the beauty of
a hundred galaxies dotted like pearls
in her hair.

Cassiopeia is waiting for
her king to come home from
a distant place, and the starlight
seems old and sad in her eyes
as she looks out on worlds past the sea of darkness,
where somewhere a crab is sitting by
a far away shore, clicking its claws and hungering
for dying stars.