Tag Archives: stars

November hymnal (22)

5 Replies

November hymnal (22)

So, after gratitude: the third part of autumn.
Questions without punctuation

Like love poems which will find answers only
When they reach the wrong person

In another language. Then the late slant
Of sun appears to end a sentence

Without words. No hope of early release.
The moon is balanced on the sky’s highest

Tent pole, just above the bear on the bicycle.
But nobody sees the bicycle. Suddenly

In the night’s back third we’re all up there
Clutching the ring to our parachutes

In the diffident cold, like all the stars
And no less courageous for it, our panic

Making a shape for strangers
Holding hands below.

When there are stars

4 Replies

stauntonTrainstation

When there are stars

The train is always departing
Or skidding through without stopping.

Because the crows blend in to the night sky
They lose their right to complain

If a thought intrudes on the view.
The thought– it wakes you in the night

After the candle has guttered into its glass
And the house is a helmet too small to wear

When there are stars. The thought’s engine
Is fierce but its tracks have already been laid,

It will go right on by whether consciousness
Stands by with its ticket or not:

When the train wakes me in the dark
I think of people I know, the cost

Of their freight, of a mile of empty cars
Pushing through the darkness with dust

Their only passengers. In the morning
The crows stomp their feet soundlessly

But can finally speak again, about everything
They saw when their eyes were closed

And they slept above the earth, like the stars
We do not see during the day. About

An empty train and what it used to carry.

To the Tune of a Song Not Yet Written [4]

14 Replies

To the Tune of a Song Not Yet Written [4]

 

I walk up my own street after sunset.
The moon is not yet up and the last streetlight

is behind me. Slowly, slowly I trudge up the hill
and slowly, slowly my shadow fades into the dark bricks.

I have lost myself and where I am going
but with no streetlights the roof has been taken off

the world. If I stood still I could find and count a star
for each of the eighteen thousand days I have lived so far.

Here in the dark stretch of street they are with me.
With my shadow gone and the dark bricks

pretending not to move at the speed of stars.

Early Summer, Cape Cod

2 Replies

Early Summer, Cape Cod

To the world we go, extinguishing and compelled.
Early summer evening. Through a knot of fireflies

A few stars showing. To the world
an evening of fireflies and an epoch of stars

are the same, just what I see, no difference.
I will remember this firefly and this evening

as they travel at light’s speed into a past
beyond existence at the same speed a star’s memory

travels into the future to meet this evening,
this view. To the world depth starts to go

its own way towards deterioration and someone
determines it’s time to start counting the stars.