Wandering Hither and Yon

How many nights had he sat there,
under painted constellations,
muttering to himself:

“Oh wheeling and revolving of things!”

A year’s perhaps, maybe even a century’s?
And still he squandered those delicate vials
all filled with the wonder of starlight on snow,
and the beat of a golden dragonfly’s wing,
and mixed them with abandon
into his silver crucible.

How many souls had he summoned,
from books written in strange meter,
pressing the wise, the lost, and the loved,
who stood, for but a brief instant, before him,
blinking and bemused.

Yet neither the crucible nor the dead
would return that most elusive ghost:
a memory of a brief smile,
caught in a sideways glance
when his heart was young.