The Anatomy of Nebulae

I was born, an invention,

Leonine sun, Piscean moon.

Sunkissed, golden fields of oats,

evergreen and mauve mountain haze—

a listless summer’s day.

The stars whispered my future

from the depths of the Pleiades

but my kin turned a deaf ear.

They knew not the oration of galaxies

nor the soliloquies of hills,

only of wrought iron books

used to keep stardust creatures in place.

But stardust has a way,

when restricted and compacted

over years and years,

of bursting forth

in a kaleidoscope of prismatic saturation.

It is uncontainable, ineffable,

if you will, or will not,

as the spirit of cerulean streams

tumbling gleeful over a painter’s pallet of stones,

or the steam that rises from the nostrils

of a buck snorting into the blushing sunrise.

Mere words nor force of will

can contain constellations.