Star Sequence | Part III. | What Might Be

I don't know if any of you have read all of the Star Sequence book but if you have then you know there are three themes in the book and three sections. That would be because the idea for the book started with one poem that became three companion poems, Star Sequence. I was looking over the three poems a few years ago, wondering if they were worth anything to anyone, if I should finally submit something somewhere when the idea occurred to me to write the book with the three poems at its center. I had never tried writing to a theme before and I found to my surprise it was a lot easier than the way I had written before, waiting for lightning to strike as they say.

Partly in response to Steve's post, I can tell you that I write for one reason, because I feel I have to write. If I can't write, I find the depression absolutely consumes me. If I can't write, I feel as though I am losing what sanity I've managed to hang on to through these long years. So I suppose I'm writing for myself as much as anyone, although I'd like to believe that what I write might help someone else who has had similar troubles. I'd like to believe my poems inspire a little hope in someone else as they seem to for me.

There are three Star Sequence poems, monologues all, spoken by an astronomer. They could be three different individuals at three different times in history as they should seem to be on the surface or they may be the same individual imagining the three different time periods, or perhaps even a case of a person being reincarnated to the same profession at three very different time periods. Your choice. Whatever works.

There are three different "About" poems in the three different sections and these three state the three major themes of the book in my opinion at least. About Stars, About Love, and About Time pretty much sum up what I'm doing with the book. My objective was to explore those three themes from every angle I could think of but also to intertwine three to see what understanding if any I could get from the process.

The What Might Be section of the book is the last section beginning with the last of the Star Sequence poems. This one should tie into the first two, shedding a little light on the first two perhaps and offering a new perspective on the whole. Hopefully. All comments will be much appreciated. Thanks.

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Star Sequence

Rondo: Light

The stars stand around me
Like gold eyes. I can no longer
Tell where I begin and leave off.
The faint breeze in the dark pines,
And the invisible grass,
The tipping earth, the swarming stars
Have an eye that sees itself.

Kenneth Rexroth

An astronomer's dream of stars–

My God, it's full of stars.
When the white dust of the last
in a string of improbable calculations
has spiraled through the rising light,
I say amen and close my eyes.

My eyes, archivists of light
from the incalculable number
of living and decaying stars,
collectors of the astral history,
I close my eyes

and light history repeats itself.
Nightly, I listen to the litany
of star stuff and blind myself
in these collected, refracted
fragments of cosmic star dust,

my dreams are full of stars.
Last night, I photographed a particle
of history. Trapped in silver nitrate
a message written in light,
received by my telescope
only last night. Today I close my eyes,
and hold the message to the light
inside the view clears.
I see myself bent double
like Cassiopeia,

head tilted to an unpleasant degree,
I see myself peering up
through the long, brass eyepiece,
but find no end
only unimaginable light.

The burning memories of them all,
Spica, Aldebaran, Sirius, Betelgeuse,
ad infinitum. The charts
were useless to me then
as now, I drift in ether

and look on constellations
foreign to my eyes.
Below, I hear the last
of evening prayers, Veni,
Sancte Spiritus. I hear my voice,

one among the many, one alone.
Frozen and bewildered
the nightmare retreats
into the smoky midst of a nebula.
My hands gripping the eyepiece

I listen once again to the music.
Star stuff and dream stuff,
fusion and fission,
an astronomer's dream of stars
exploding in harmonious lines.