My granddaughter tells me with the charm
and certainty of her five years that Jupiter
"is the ice cream planet. If you stepped on
it, you would sink," she recites, passing on
 
the disarming metaphor of her "other"
grandma. Her eyes go dreamy when she
envisions Saturn's rings. (My turn: "snow-cone" texture!)
"Whoa!" she says when we read that Betelgeuse
 
could hold a billion of our suns. Undwarfed
by spaces where no human race is,
silences where matter barely whispers,
giggling at the name and unafraid, she's on a ride
 
like the Flying Unicorn, and just thrilled
with these new proofs the world was made for delight.


From Bird Flying through the Banquet (FutureCycle, 2017).
This poem first appeared in Innisfree Poetry Journal.