Watching the Hale-Bopp Comet Over
Howard Johnson Motel in Rolla, Missouri

They do not rest or come to Earth, neither
                        Common Swifts nor the crescent moon

in flight, but the Hale-Bopp swings near
                        every few thousand years, and we were out

on the hill above the parking lot, clutching
                        jackets and staring as we once stared

at the Indian Head test pattern on the black
                        and white television screen at the end

of the channel’s nightly broadcast. Do you
                        see it? Aster kometes, Greek for long-haired

star, trails two brilliant tails, one white, one
                        blue because the heart of the comet holds

two immense ices completely separate

                        from each other. It last appeared
4,200 years ago, and a thousand or so miles

                        back along the highway that brought
us here, we took turns guessing who painted

                        the Painted Desert. After finishing Le café
 le soir, van Gogh wrote to his sister that he had

                        painted a night that had no black in it, just
“a blue sky spangled with stars dark blue, violet,

                        green,” stars that swoop like swallows, what
could be seen, perhaps, from the comet crossing

                        over us: not the now here this of the present
but winter’s comeback, its shiver and deliver.

*****

Le Secret de Compostelle

                        From the milk of Spanish ewes
grazing in the Pyrenees, transported
                                    over the border into France to be turned
            into cheese, it moves backward, like memory,
from the westward route of pilgrimage
                                    to Santiago de Compostela. Standing

                        on a swing, swung up
and back, then pushed into view
                                    like Venus on her shell in Botticelli’s
            painting, my newly married mother
with a soft ruffled bow floating
                                    down her chest, laughs and

                        sticks out her tongue, while across her
stretches the shadow
                                    of my father taking
            her picture. On the back he will
write, my mischievous bunch
                                    of sweetness.

                        Pilgrims often recorded the stops
along their pilgrimage on large sheets
                                    of thick paper they then used to cover
            themselves at night. And at each holy
site, they added a badge, attached
                                    to their coat or hat or worn

                        around the neck: from Santiago de Compostela,
burial place of St. James, a scallop shell,
                                    emblem of their journey
            to the west, the setting sun at Finisterra,
where all the spread fingers
                                    of the sun slide back
 
                        together. What’s a relic but a thumb
of hair flicked up
                                    toward heaven like a cowlick, the way
            a cow leaves its mark when it licks
its young or the wind licks the ocean
                                    and makes it wave: brebis, bee balm,

                        bonbon, something made
into something else
                                    like the New Caledonian crows
            who learned to use a stick to get at
another, more useful stick.
                                    In Japan, they continue

                        to wave until a departing guest
disappears, but the Italian hand gesture
                                    for goodbye curves and folds
            the palm toward us
and is the same as the one we use
                                    to say come here.

*****

Copyright © 2018 by Angie Estes. May not be reproduced without permission.