To Stars

Photo by Mark Andrew Thomas

 

"Who wants to understand the poem must go to the Land of Poetry"

...... Johann Wolfgang Von Goethe

To Stars

With age, I've learned to watch my feet.

I've become cautious of falls,

the honest frailty of bones

and equally fragile, the choices

found at every crossroad.

Time makes us bend.

We learn the habit

of looking down.

I was blessedly no where

just some where between 

between "here" and "there"

a truck stop off I-40

falling off the edge of the world

into a nameless desert town,

disappearing

into a sweet black halcyon midnight.

After a summer rain

wet, shining asphalt

the smell of diesel, and chaparral

(below me,  some where between

my feet and eternity) reflected, 

you made your puddled,

gracious descent:

luminous Orion,

and faithful Sirius, the dog star.

Antares, the scorpion's tail,

the Pleiades,

dancing in Indra's shining jewel net.

And the Big Dipper

offering,

offering, 

offering forever

Lauren Raine (2003)