Astronomers conclude that stars began
paired do-si-do in their celestial dance,
though some grabbed their partners and embraced them
or swung them into swirls of tilted space,
losing them to the spiral force of time:
they don’t look back but forget their twinning
and live on like our sun a god apart,
Pollux without Castor. You notice them
everywhere in the night sky, singly and
together, bound or detached, but can’t know
the shy uncertainty with which they stepped
onto the floor, arisen from the dust
and turning around to the caller’s voice
slowly at first, and then in a great rush.