Puppis the deck

In only two dimensions does our lot Have finite boundaries the lawyer said.

In back a picket fence and storage shed Define our limit, while trees in front blot

The cars with faulty mufflers out. Yet not Even the twilight settling overhead

Can block what reaches from a flower bed, A newly-painted house, a garden plot.

We sit together on the deck and guess The light-years of our ownership. Despite

The tea we still shiver in the vastness That this small suburban angle subtends-

This property expanding through the night, Ending only if the universe ends.

This poem is from Alan R. Wilson's The Sonneteer's Sky Atlas, a sequence derived from the eighty-eight constellations. Other poems from the book have appeared in Chicago Review, The Hampden-Sydney Poetry Review, The Malahat Review, and Nimrod. A selection from the atlas won second prize in the national CBC Literary Competition.

Copyright National Forum: Phi Kappa Phi Journal Summer 1995
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