If the Mountain Has a Question,
Who Does It Ask?

Ace Boggess

There were stars once. It could see them
off beyond its neighbor’s peak: specks
like pixels burning from a TV screen gone black.
It spoke to them as if bound gods
whose fluctuations answered:
shimmer, yes; shimmer shimmer, no.
Such comfort in that blurry pareidolia
before cloud haze held more light,
city strobes erased night’s science.
Now the rock looks down & ponders,
listens ever closer to the earth.