This isn’t HDT’s Edenic Concord,
but an RV Park and campground
in exurban Detroit where a dear friend
got married one September evening
and I gave a short speech about love
being the perseverant stuff of starlight.
After toasting the baffling cardinal
directions and swilling warm prosecco
from a plastic flute, I stepped outside
and watched the couples dance
through the opaque window
of the circus tent. I remembered
Whitman’s “When I Heard the Learn’d
Astronomer,” that fatalism inextricable
from wonder and thought how even
happiness can seem tawdry in the moment.
Looking up at a ladle of stars just visible
above the pin oak leaves, I filled my heart
with all that I could see.
Cal Freeman (he/him) is the music editor of The Museum of Americana: A Literary Review and author of the books Fight Songs (Eyewear 2017) and Poolside at the Dearborn Inn (R&R Press 2022). His writing has appeared in many journals including Atticus Review, Image, The Poetry Review, Verse Daily, Under a Warm Green Linden, North American Review, The Moth, Oxford American, River Styx, and Advanced Leisure. He is a recipient of the Devine Poetry Fellowship (judged by Terrance Hayes), winner of Passages North’s Neutrino Prize, and a finalist for the River Styx International Poetry Prize. Born and raised in Detroit, he teaches at Oakland University and serves as Writer-In-Residence with InsideOut Literary Arts Detroit. His chapbook of poems, Yelping the Tegmine, has just been released.