The Gambler

for 17P/Holmes and Eric Van

He shakes the frost off his badger-black hair,

coming aboveground in the deadening cold

so absolute, the sky is bursting to black ice,

stars snapped loose—even a comet glitters

like gunpowder, in microcosm the universe

exploded, a clockwork of collision and dust.

The volume under his arm crackles open,

pried to pages of mica, their mathematics

crosshatched with a lacquer frieze of ink

shining under starlight, each uncalculated

vacancy diagrammed around with hazard,

sloe-leaves, ash-keys, fir-cones in a strew

around his feet assimilating unnoticed to earth

that shrugged him out, now summer's last

crackerjack tinder crisps colorless underfoot.

Between planets and parabolas, he winters out.

The moon bows and hollows like his smile,

right hand against left, not playing dice.