An ideal holiday place would be somewhere lost
in the wide largely empty prairie plains:
a small, cozily comfortable old farm house
with a windbreak of evergreen trees,
a few outbuildings, and perhaps a duck pond,
a few geese gabbling about and around.

There would have to be a patch of grass
extending beyond the shade of the maple tree
where one could lie and gaze up at the
overarching night sky, crammed to infinity
with brightly gleaming, never-ending stars,
galaxies, nebulae and slowly drifting planets.

I once heard some fool say we should count them!
Clearly someone who has never been overpowered
by the magnificence of a country sky at night.
Where would anyone ever begin to count?
With which of the receding starry spheres,
like crystal onion layers fading into infinity.

On cloudy nights, when storms and tornados are
stalking around the widespread, naked plain,
we would sit on the covered front or side porch,
coffee cups, and perhaps glasses of the good stuff
to hand, and watch the silent artillery barrages
of lightning over and along the dark horizon,

waiting for the fast flash of forked lightning
to begin stalking toward us across the darkling plain,
heralded by distant, faintly heard grumbles, then
rolling rumbles as the crooked legs walk closer,
blinding white short flashes and overhead crashes
announcing the welcome arrival of drenching rain.