At first, I can't get over the sickle moon
curved like a missionary's lip in tolerant
disdain. But day-lit, he's overshadowed

by the hills and hills of thistles
drawing their straining, dry light
to a gasoline shine, detonating to heat.

Today heaven has flipped down into roots
and digs high into dry things till they look ripped
and brilliant, till it opens from the earth, plain as day:

until milk thistles crack tarantula
legs of husk and, hot with hairy light,
pitch upon themselves in clusters--

nebulae coiling me into their midst, into
accounts of constellations, of birth and death
and this place, in summer months, between--

and till the lean, articulated prongs
of star thistles cock their delicate
blaze in coronas of pistols and burst (oh starry!)

again and again so that, from a distance, they compose
an endless lecture of light (starry starry
day!) firing in all directions,

each thistle looking like a Christ star,
perfect and deliberate, aware of some Bethlehem
bare and gold as straw.