It is the blackest sea, no light, no sound, no air, no errant ships and it is night (of course) always night, but then there are the Sentinels—
Beacons, relentless beacons
Beyond human language
Still
Sending out words of vigilance
Nonetheless
https://www.topverses.com/about/stars
As you well know, I have been trying to focus on the presence of signifiers–the feral blender noises the dogs make when they are behind the dark door–the way the clouds pool and furl in beautiful splendor–let us say our daily prayers
Swap the signifiers
Killer clouds for beautiful dogs
This savage world/all ripped to pieces
While the light of one ordinary star is enough to
Remind me
Just how good you are
At holding on to me
All the same.
Like never reading the love letters I wrote you
Words scattered all around
Like never seeing how
I let the blazing suns of a thousand remote
Solar systems blink your name
Like ignoring the food on your plate
The clothes neatly folded and pressed
The hands that kept you there
Breathing in, breathing out, wanton flowers
The messages painted on the billboard of the world
Child come home,
Rain come down
I’ll never stop looking
Across this field for you
Years ago a man who fought fire told me that the hot center of it is black, vortex dark, a hole you could fall into and never stop
Falling
There is no fire without burning, I tell the children, each sun a metaphor for something
Something bigger than us
Something bigger than them
Than all the worlds of burning
Light reaching back to us
Saying something
Maybe in Morse code
Flashlit messages exchanged through neighboring windows by children in the night
You are…eternal
The girl-child mama ties her daughters to her–kites, they rise
Aloft in the summer breeze
Curl, swirl, dip, and sing
Bird-children
While faraway grandmother
Ponders apogee
The furthest point one can be from another.
