Under the Big Dipper (take 2)

Over the last 5 years I have published more than 500 poems (including some translations) here on my lampoetry blog.  For the most part I like to write in the moment, which means that I usually don't revise or rework these poems very much before publishing them online.  But as a departure from my usual practice, I am currently preparing to publish a group of 30 or so of these poems as a stand-alone collection, which has given me an opportunity to do a little bit more clean-up and rewrite on some of them.  For me the challenge is how to keep the poems fresh and in the moment - which is the way I try to write - even while rewriting them long after the initial experience that gave rise to the poem in the first place.   This is one of the poems that I intend to include as part of the collection, which I have been reworking in the last few days.  You can read the original version here.

Through a thin scrim

Of stratus clouds
Each point of the Dipper
Briefly emerged last night
Opening up to a vista
Billions of light years hence
Helping me to levitate
And better appreciate
The very curvature of space

Once born aloft on those

High orbital currents

I was drawn

Higher still

Following the Polestar north

To a freedom absolute

My disembodied spirit soared

Soon dispersing among

The legion of stars

Like a handful of

Particulate matter

Then as the clouds

Regrouped overhead

I plummeted earthward

And soon found myself

 Grounded once again  

In corporal form convicted
That from now until
The Dipper inverts
In another couple of months
The earth is going to continue
Sending forth its blessings

In a multitude of ways