Plump Orson Welles

pauses to inspect his cigar

 

his growing church

of satellites

 

circling in trepidation

for the final word.

 

Like the starlight

 

clean and hard

 

from a source that may

or may not exist

 

radio waves pulse

from their tower

into the jet-marked sky

 

flouting the outstretched

arms of our antennae

 

as they part the atmosphere.

 

Stout planets twist

from Einstein to Churchill

 

or slip orbit

to flee the nasal bulletins

of mad Lord Haw Haw.

 

Even the music cutting out

as your garage door eclipses

another day

 

coaxed from a weary violin

and proving through the static

to be O Holy Night

 

will drift eternally through space

 

shedding its half-lives

 

and bumping into stars.