Shot down in flames
On clear sky winter nights
I touch certain bright stars
with the tip of my index finger,
one eye closed as if sighting a rifle.
Not a single one has ever fallen
to the shot of my ocular bullet but
I have seen many flaming down in pain
to well-aimed shots of other sky shooters
on nights astronomers mistakenly call
meteor showers.

Linear errors
Logicians tell me “Just connect the dots!”
But the dots in life, as in the Universe,
are the hundreds of thousands of stars
visible in the midnight sky domed over
the Sandhills, and there are infinite ways
of connecting them, endless patterns
that can be created by linear alignments,
some random, some cautious, some reckless,
some beyond all sense of balance or symmetry.
Best to connect the dots with looping, curling,
swirling lines of spontaneity and serendipity.
No one has ever lived in a linear Universe.