Each clear night I drive out
to the secret heart the desert
doesn’t know it has, past
the Pima’s people’s sacred peak,
to use what they once called Long-Eyes
and harvest light from darkness—
mine at last, after twenty billion years.
To stand watch as the edges of the universe
glitter with infant galaxies
is all I ever wanted before.
But tonight my gaze is captured by her,
pink-bundled in my rocking arms,
baptized by ancient light—and I marvel
to think of the sights those sleeping eyes
will soon open to, for years to come—
long after mine are closed forever
to the star-stunned night.
Beatriz F. Fernandez’s chapbook, Shining from a Different Firmament (Finishing Line Press, 2015), was featured at the Miami Book Fair International last year. She’s a former grand prize winner of the Writer’s Digest Poetry Award; recent credits include Boston Literary Magazine, FLARE: the Flagler Review, Minerva Rising, and Words Dance.