in the street of the sky night walks scattering poems

in the street of the sky night walks scattering poems

(e.e. cummings)

in our cities and towns, we do not see

the vast landscape of the sky:

street after street is full

of the tiny false lights of earth –

the electric radiance makes a haze

sky-obscuring, sky-dimming, sky-shrinking;

night in its glory appears only as a street – and who

walks in that street? it looks badly-lit, a mere 

scattering of pin-prick stars insufficient to light

poems, lovers or the sky itself ...

                           **********

in the wild places, though (some do remain)

the expanse of sky, fully revealed, is nothing like any

street; it is an ocean, and we sail anywhere in the ship

of waking dreams, of eye-rapture, of endless delight; there

the stars are myriad, countless, bright,  

sky-filling, sky-spilling, sky-illuminating, sky-extending –

night is an opening into the whole universe, where the mind

walks in amazement, in a joy that stretches thought and confounds sight,

scattering, as the fortunate have discovered,

poems of unfathomable dark – poems of multiplying light

Written for the prompt, at the edge of starry night, for 'imaginary garden with real toads', where our frame of reference is the last line of an e.e. cummings poem, which has become the title of this one and also the first words of my lines, making a double word-acrostic.