One night there are valleys
Say around eleven
When the moon is wide
As a brother's grin.
The field is black as shadow:
Soy-beans sleep in loops
Of darkness,
Their leaves curled.
The valleys of the moon,
As unlike pitted stones
Or walls or men
Or water or dreams-
Unlike as pages in a book...
When he saw them,
The valleys like hands,
Valleys like the bones of hands,
Galileo rushed into the street
Hoping for someone to tell.
He had no field.
He could not talk with his hands.

Poet Stephen Kuusisto's most recent book is Only Bread, Only Light. He teaches in the graduate creative writing program at Ohio State University in Columbus.