Make a wish

March 1, 2014

Make a wish

The night is clear and the stars shine through

like diamond pinpricks. They are the same stars that you see.

The pale starlight reaching our eyes seems young and new,

but it is ancient, weary from travel through such infinite darkness.

Perhaps this star just gave its last breath, a small cry from the depths

of space, before shattering brilliantly. We will see its death, so many years later.

The stars are far apart,

and we are farther.

The things you think about on clear winter nights

August 30, 2012

The things you think about on clear winter nights

A comet criss-crosses through a sky

studded with stars that shine

like city windows, like

sparks of electricity. 

Its hyperbolic trajectory traces

arcs through deep space, or maybe

it hurtles around suns

like an airplane around the earth,

like an electron around a nucleus.

You interstellar traveler,

do you ever get homesick?

I know you race on farther than the glimpse

we catch, faster than numbers race through wires,

or an electrical impulse across synapses in the brain.

Pulled on by gravity, or destiny,

blown on by solar winds,

comet:

I wonder,

do you ever long

for your cold nebula home?

If you could, would you ever return?

Or are you like us,

the planets,

the molecules,

wandering forever and yet

trapped by your routines:

your physics, your fate.

to us, it's seamless

February 16, 2011
published in Live Poets of NJ's anthology "Inside My World" Spring 2011

to us, it’s seamless

the dying sun makes me

into a shadow-puppet silhouette,

carves my outline into the carpet,

pale light shining through

in soft rhomboid shapes

between my icicle elbows,

stereotypical hips,

fishnet ribs. 

with my fingers splayed wide,

some strange diamond prisms

explode open, appear

as starburst fireworks,

ocean waves shattering,

satellites winking in orbit.

the thought draws me up into

outer space, among stars, supernova-new,

and their stained-glass galaxies.

there must be so many beautiful sounds—

endless planetary symphonies,

continuous telescopic overtures—

and no one at all to hear them.

and yet here I am,

back on solid ground,

dreaming only of weekends

and of someone to whisper

his thoughts in my ear.