The History of Night

Cumulus closing
The ragged pupil of our sky.
The stars now curtained,
Their glittering throng interrupted.
Then, the wind levers open,
A small, perfect aperture.
We peer up, squinting
Into the glimmering past.
It’s light issued from
As far back
As we will ever know.

Ocean View in Kansas City

I saw the Al Gore movie the other night (An Inconvenient Truth), and it looks like we may all be in a lot of hot sea water in a few years, with the tides rising, due to global warming. It is not entirely clear to me, but it looks like we should be setting our sites on buying some seaside, ocean front property for our retirement years, somewhere in the vicinity of Kansas City. I propose that we change the state's motto, which is now "ad astra per aspera" which is Latin for "To the stars through hardship" to something like, "Kansas, the other 'ocean state'".