The stars we could not see

There was a great black and white ring

around the moon tonight

like a shift in space, a mushroom cloud as the sky exploded,

a ring of empty atmosphere.

I stood out with my father, who tipped his head back

and said: "Count how many stars are in between the ring."

One, two, three, four.

Maybe five?

I accounted for the few that

may have been so far away from our little earth

that we couldn't see their

faint glimmer in the ring.

"Each star is a day," he said, "and that is how many days until the next rain."

I laughed into the low desert sky. It never rains anything but fire here.

Even if there was only one star in the ring, it would never rain.

But I counted still.

Four days from the moon ring,

it did not rain.

I expect it was because of

the stars we could not see.

My father is the whimsical type. You would never know it

if you met the desert of his quiet, solid self.

But it is there, just like the invisible stars.

And I believed him, so I accounted for those stars unseen.

It was 147 days later,

he was gone and the rain was here.

I had spent those 143 drought-dry days waiting on the

invisible stars, the invisible rain.

He was right, he was always right. There is a great black and white ring

around the moon tonight,

there are no stars in between.

It will rain nothing but fire without my father.