Lightyears above the Santa Cruz Mountains,
things we cannot see hum strange melodies –
wayward satellite, core of a dead star.

And far below in the Stanford foothills
we can capture ghostly songs in a dish
while cattle claim the acres as their own.

Hundreds of them dot the landscape content
to mosey about in the valley breeze,
content to graze the summer days away.

They are not bothered by our telescopes,
our desperate need to know what calls to us
from the phone lines of interstellar space – 

A tuning fork vibration unravels
from one galaxy to our galaxy,
a telegram of foreign origin

that may explain how we all arrived here,
explains that we are not alone out here
and the placement of the stars is not chance.

I have always been desperate for answers,
to know what calamity caused all this
and if that calamity can hear me

where the cows laze in the thick August grass
sunning their hides as the traffic goes by
and the sky slowly fades to indigo. 

But I also want this to be enough –
the clockwork light and darkness of the day,
curtains drawn to reveal heavens at play

and cattle drifting in the summer night,
blissful, happy to smell the jasmine air,
to stare down the rose moon and simply moo.