space poem #3

  

There is no space between the pauses, no easy leaps

into the cosmic sea, no place to find a purchase,

no ledge to grip and breathe; just the weight of me, a gift

of gravity, just the planet beneath my feet holding me

not as maternal parent but in anger and defeat, a fury

that my eyes gaze upward, that my thoughts yearn to flee.

If the rocket held enough fuel, if my clumsy fingers

knew the order of buttons to push, if the spacesuit

was airtight and through the great thrust I could be free,

my eyes might sometimes look behind me but the reality

would always be the future hanging before me,

one lurching step,
one free-floating fall, one anchored line at a time.

It appears that I am timeless;

a distant light travelling into the past for future eyes to see

and wonder

how a spaceman might have been stranded for so long

upon this sphere of blue and green, and  I also look up

at the stars that have been gone for longer

than starmen, such as me, have been
and wonder what other eyes might have stood
in some other time and place
and seen
and in seeing, have wondered
and with the wonder, yearned.

space poem #2

Spun so that everything

has weight. Moved so that everything

appears still. He talks to make sense

of the senseless, listens to silence,

tries not to be cowed.  In his suit,

built to fend off cold and radiation,

he emerges - the cord, so like that cord

in the moments when he first emerged

that held him, fed him, connected him back

through the many moments to his first parents -

he drifts, watches stars and emptiness compete,

the void a mouth, a scream, a fist…

the stars, songs desperate to be heard

before the ultimate silence takes them

and makes them begin the journey again.

He turns slowly, moving as he is,

held as he is, suited as he is,

and wonders…

If the cord broke and he drifted,

how much time might he be granted

and what would be the worth of each breath

when even the stars flicker into darkness?

space poem (edit 1)

In the silence, a voice – the unheard sound

a ship’s rockets create as they cry out

against the void. In the vacuum, a wind… fingers

trailing down the cosmic spine, drifts

from star to star, brushes across the point

where dreams become and thoughts,

minute eddies of  time, flow back and forth, pool

in the emptiness of comparisons – really

is any star better than the previous, greater

than the nova, less than the yellow sun’s

emergent experience of the uncompromising night?

And in this darkness consciousness travels through,

a line without intention voyaging to places so distant

by the time they are arrived at the reasons

no longer matter… like how a starman

can hold a child, a daughter, say, her tiny legs

kicking, and, with all the promises whispered

into the powerful scent of that newborn crown,

still be shocked when she leaves home…

as if the years were but short breaths

between the joys and errors of life, and the starman

finds himself in the spaceship, his face pressed

against the small porthole, watches

as his daughter, like a bright blue planet, fades

into the diminishing distance of existence.

a space poem

In the silence, a voice – the unheard sound

a ship’s rockets create as they cry out

against the void. In the vacuum, a wind,

like fingers trailing down a spine, shifts

from star to star, touches the point

where dreams become and thoughts –

the eddy of  time – flow back and forth, pool

in the emptiness of comparisons; really

is any star better than the previous, greater

than the nova or less than the yellow sun’s

emerging experience of the night?

And in this darkness we travel around and around

and through, a line without intention voyaging

to places so distant that by the time we reach them

the reasons no longer matter, like how a starman

can hold a child, a daughter, say, tiny legs kicking,

and, with all the promises whispered

into the powerful scent of that  newborn crown,

still be shocked when she leaves home…

as if the years were but short breaths

between the joys and errors of life, and the starman

finds himself in the spaceship, his face pressed

against the small porthole watching

his daughter, like a bright blue planet, fading
into the diminishing distance of existence.

love

Spiralling out from the mind

hope, a rope to coil

around unsuspecting habits and you —

your words, stars that burst and I

move toward sound, bending like a leaf towards the sun,

remember songs sung at night,

hands on the speckled red laminate of childhood,

the crickets outside — ghosts that call cats

into the night-light playground of dreams;

sometimes the two of us share thoughts

before separate incidents from the past

divide what was momentarily joined.

When hands touch, fingerprints collide

so quietly no one notices the change

until at some later date, looking back,

realization dawns as a smile or a nod
and what has become just is.

The Unseen

 It is said somewhere, somewhere

out there where words meet the air,

merge, twist and become other than

the thoughts they were released for

that anything is possible and it can be true

but this time it is not no matter what

might be said, the moment that was

is not, vanished - a memory only, a fish

gasping, beached and afraid, knowing

as the sand grinds its life away, there is

no returning to the sea, no sunrise underneath

there is just the moment reflecting, a glint

in the eye, a quiver in the lips and words

let loose and falling into the past

where they will remain until having fallen

so far they become unheard while the moment 
beyond the reflection becomes the unseen.