Goodbyes:

Star-man sits securely strapped, the weight of no weight

pushes him upwards as if his mother’s aged and firm hand

still held its familiar place in the small of his adolescent back,

her insistence his actions propel him forward. Star-man’s eyes

stare into the void, at the edge of vision, between his visor

and the metal, he catches sight of his family in the stars,

distantly they beckon,  star-man remembers words, he wishes

he could sever ties with, send them spinning, end over end,

into oblivion. The thrust of it all is that somewhere behind his family

remain, moving on their own path forward into a future without

his input, his future has become a journey to leave them further

behind, watching them grow smaller and smaller, like comets,

once close, now a million miles, and growing, away, they recede

with every overused thought he has as he tries to forget them.

an Alzheimer's evening sonnet: (edit 1)

Childhood, early sixties, less populated times, less a flurry
for all that could be got, more a psychedelic dance as night skies
bewildered the innocent mind as if each twinkling star,
each marauding nebulae, was a whisper from gods,

long lost in time’s contacting funnel, to follow them, discover
the source of light; my sister and I, dizzy from whirling
because the atoms in our bodies demanded movement,
would fall to the grass, the crickets serenading the summer nights,
and stare up at numerous stars so bright: now I have lost the gods
and so many humans fill this city, the stars appear to have shrunk

into themselves, old star-men and old star-women who twitch

as they scramble for memories of those faraway days
while fearful, lost in the terror of the bewildering present
and above their grey heads the stars fade further from view.

The Call:

Star-men ride on solar winds, arms stretched

wide even though they remain inside,

not the spider look and feel, held by the fake

umbilical while around them distant stars

sing songs with words no star-man can understand,

yet they feel them, deep within, suited or naked,

floating in the lack of gravity or earthed, feet planted,

the weight they were born to hold giving them time

to stand and listen, to feel within the pulse that makes

the heart quicken ‑ yes star-men long for the hyper drive,

seek often the craziness of the wormhole, that elongation

of the mind and dreaming, time lost then re-found,

but nothing matches the wide-legged stance, unhelmeted

head thrown back, arms on the hips and the eyes, the eyes

for that certain sun’s light,  open to capture in sunrise

and at dusk, the first and last rites of stars, their light

like strands of hair, flickering in the solar wind as they beckon,

shyly as Sirens and the Odysseus post called Earth

must lose the battle as star-men seek  ever to answer

that unrelenting call, return, leaving again the planet home.