About Stars

Somewhere between this point
and the stars above tonight
in the light years beyond
lies our brief history, stretching reticently
as a toddler first testing her limbs
against the atmosphere. Not as bright
as the dimmest star we see,
barely a glimmer in the forever depths–
our earliest true words, the spark of our first fires,
our dance, our song, our striving–
all speeding away from our
lonely branch of the Milky Way.

Deep in this bitter night
with the frogs of winter imposing
their brazen song upon the wilderness,
no apology for their yearnings,
I am struck by how tender
is our race and how fearful. How we fret
like children over knowledge we cannot possess
and call it science yet deny
our instincts, hide our nature,
and call it worship. Astronomers say
the heavens are indifferent,
no influence over fortunes or failures,
no steering current or determining gravity
only an attraction for each other
through the absolute darkness. Still,

the first sun gave birth to all the rest,
a solar Brahman scattering the power and the glory
derived from creation through the infinite fabric of space,
celestial tapestry. He set them all ablaze and ticking–
the fires that keep the soul alive
in the absence of light.

The truths we know about stars
are not many, the names we call them,
some minuscule shred of their histories–
what we think we know is dust in the hand
shifting subtly then gone in a breath.

In the distant embrace of stars,
all our yesterdays and tomorrows are drifting
towards us or away, the long ago moment
before the first human error,
not even a tick in the stellar clock.