The night sky cups the world

We are 7, and then 8, and then 9 searching

Like small boats in a foggy harbor

Scattered and seeking

Muffled voices call out like small foghorns

Floating alongside the lights that spread over the field,

And melting with the murmur of men’s voices from the small house beside the road

Silence, then the small burst of a song,

A small child’s shriek and laughter

Echo, and then are lost in the thin mountain night;

Cows tread through the marshy field

A low call, the patter of small feet,

Frogs frozen, caught in the patch of light

Then wiggling and wet in small hands;

The bags grow heavy.

Above, clouds shift and reshape

And the stars began to glimmer

Over this small place we call ours

Over the fields hard-won from the forest

Cradled in the mountains’ heart

Lost in the rolling ranges that lap from the edge of Burma

The night sky cups over the world

We are 7, and then 8, and then 9 searching.