Orion, Up

god is asleep,
but lambs are bleating.

In heaven, Orion is cartwheeling
through the southern sky, tall and thin
and far away.  He is your constellation,
and has been these three years.

A cigarette flicked toward empyrean fails
and falls onto desert
plants, unseasonably full from autumn

rainstorms that sweep me up, churning and silt-laden,
across borders, against the months
to Texas
and haybale sheep, grazing
under a goosedown sky.