No Counterpart

Fifty-five fields. Two clouds passed the empty filter.

Near the Whirlpool — seventy to ninety from the centre — each holds about three million suns of hydrogen.

No star sits in the optical. Down to twenty-seven five on the plate, nothing.

The radio still has them. Line width about twenty. Unresolved in the beam.

I will not call them dark matter yet. Tidal debris still waits in the interacting room.

The leftover is the gas that held without lighting, and the empty plate while the line still sits.