The shape was bright white
like the moon. The moon whose face
                that year had been trampled
                by bouncing white men.

No flight was recorded that night
                though the night
                was clear.
It should have been easy
to count the moving vessels in the sky.

Jimmy Carter noted the object was not solid
                but self-luminous
like lightning or a mirage.
It hovered
and changed from blue
                to red to white again,
leapt away as quickly as it came;
                dismissed
                as quickly as believed.

                The people in that Georgia Lions Club
                began to draw the shape
                but none of them could
remember the shape.
                A scientist thought maybe
                                it was sunlight scattering
                sodium and barium in the atmosphere.
Possible. We were drawing the possibilities
but none of us
                could remember the shape
of possibility:
                not solid
                but self-luminous

                                like lightning or a mirage.