old light

The stars settle into the cold black sky, biding the insubordinance of all the satellites and airplanes that dot and blink across the dense dark night. They linger in the familiar constellations, they straggle and struggle and shine. They spatter and litter those obdurate depths, their light the very reach of time spilling down from the firmament. They are the distance and they are the clock, running and grasping from remote beginning to brittle ends. Somehow they sift through dust and day, finding the pin points of my open eyes, gazing ever upwards.

It is the way I wander through the stars, the way the night sets upon me, another predator hungry for an easy meal. It is how proud and dumb and hapless I am, this bitter critter, this numb and aging meat. These fruitful confluences, life and lore and respite, stuck out in the endless sea of night. These pitiful wishes I carry beneath my ribs, this notion that to have gotten this far is to have somehow triumphed. Another reckless beast, dull and running on instinct, thinking it has a right of way across all eight lanes of the freeway. Another mass of blunt muscle and contentious bone awaiting the inevitable impact.

The old chestnut, this sky at night, my eyes misting with the thought that you might be witness to these same stars, this same night in that far away land where you abide. That old saw, the once and future love, the world so much stagecraft between us. That idea that what burned once might be kindling to another flame. Tonight though there is only the skies and the stars and songs I shouldn't listen to when I am so close to broken. Tonight though there are only words and aches, the body warning of all these dated expirations. The old light that arrives worn thin, reaching across the chill of creation. The light that still finds you once every fire is gone.