Collecting Light

Aug 2 2015

Tonight was the night

I determined to count the stars.

But the longer I watched, they more they multiplied.

The darkness filled, and the weakest light

became more and more visible;

legion upon legion of stars

appearing in great promiscuous waves.

As if my eyes

were peeling back time,

telescoping deeper

into the cosmos.

Until I could no longer keep track.

So I simply lay on my back, looking up

at a sky dense with stars

awash in light;

as if infinity

were in my grasp.

When counting

no longer mattered

and I wondered how far I could go,

my dilating eyes

collecting the light

of falling stars, and satellites

and vast glowing nebulae.

In the clear crisp air

of a moonless night

the heavens were coldly ablaze.

And I was probing deeper and deeper,

riding the planet

hurtling through space.

There is something different about this poem. Maybe it’s the subject matter:  dangerously close to cliché; too damned easy and obvious. Or maybe my approach; which was just to say it, and not worry so much about compression, or artfulness, or misdirection. Or maybe it was that I didn’t work it so hard, didn’t endlessly revise, revisit, and revise: what you see is pretty much the first draft, with a few tweaks here and there.

 But whatever it is, it was satisfying to write, and seems to stand up well enough to the reading. I like the whimsy. I like the way it evokes the actual experience of taking in a starry night:  the way -- over time -- the sky rewards your patience, opening itself up like a revelation.