On the plateau of Bosmenditte
we watched the sky deepen
and the last Pyrenean peaks
creeping from the bronze age,
the six of us on the grass,
two lots of parents, two daughters,
assembling chairs and a table,
foraging for rotted twists of oak
to make a fire, a token of the dying sun.
We broke bread on top of the world,
poured red wine into mugs,
and alternated between
the pitter-patter of conversation
and listening to the rhythm
of clonking bells: a group of cows
had gathered by the slope’s edge,
watching us with moon eyes,
their bodies cream-white.
And from a nearby tor
a dozen sheep ambled down,
approached the cows and stopped
like stationary clouds, glowing
in the still-darkening sky, our fire
the sole flickering of movement.
Until a movement on the road
between bushes ― a horse galloping,
then five more, dark brown and tan,
their manes flowing like mantillas ―
they halted opposite the cows
and sheep, and joined the vigil.We lay on rugs on spongy moss
huddled for warmth, heads on stomachs,
our prayers and wishes at the ready.
And nothing came.
The animals entered dark outlines
and constellations marked the bones
of giant mythic beasts and beings,
Cassiopeia and Ursa Major,
Pegasus, Cygnus the Swan.
And still we waited, with nerves
and hearts as much as eyes,
as if we were waiting for new lives
to open up miraculously
or some spark to jolt us
into different ways of thinking.
And as we wondered, ‘Will they ever come?’
three of us shouted, the others
exclaiming ‘Where? Where?’ ―
we pointed to the interstellar spaces
and there, a streak of light, a cry of wonder,
then a rush of thicker light, its wake
fizzing like a rocket’s tail,
a smaller star unzipping a patch of dark.
And on they came, popping up,
as slight as blinks
or like torches of white fire
drawn across the immensity of space ―
as if a veil had fallen
and we were watching
the stirrings of the universal mind,
each cell and synapse and signal
in the firmament of its being.
Up our wishes flew, and prayers, too,
our backs moulded in the mountain top
our eyes filling with endlessness.And in the freckled darkness  
the stars looked down on us
and on the gathering of silent animals,
as if they willed us there, the ones
they had been waiting for,
ensouling the universe
with our thoughts for sick and absent friends
and wishes for uncertain futures ―
the stars saw the meaning of life ―
if only for the time it took
to see and lose a prayer
in our evaporating trails of love.