Poem: Perihelion

Perihelion

It happened, already,
about an hour ago,
for me as I write,
this planet rolled by the sun,
reached closest
to that great, glowing one
which centers out orbit.
It is night, here,
so I could not stand out and wave,
as if I were a cruise ship passenger
journeying besides a small town
and sharing a visual greeting with the locals,
I did not even notice it, did not realize it at all,
I was distracted by closer things,
by the dark sky tonight, 
looking for the moon.

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