The Falling Star

Her untouchable celestial home.

Though accustomed to its vastness from birth,

and to the deep darkness that lay between,

the young star still sought out her kin to dance.

They would, for a time; twining elegance.

But they, locked in their orbits, had to stay.

/

She, burning ember of night, could not stay.

No matter how she longed to remain home,

alone in her shimmering elegance,

and yearning each long moment from her birth,

to find a constant partner for her dance,

to keep her company in time between.

/

She traversed the universe in between;

planetary bodies designed to stay.

They twinkled, in mockery, of her dance.

Her passage, no more free, than their staunch home.

She shot by stars who, dying, gave new birth,

bore sole witness to void-bound elegance.

/

She brief met Saturn, beringed elegance,

brushed one gleaming finger on stars between

his face and his rings, and felt hope’s new birth;

perhaps his gravity could help her stay.

She, the favored wanderer, yearned for home,

but forced, instead, to freefall; her cursed dance.

/

She swept through velvet moonbeams, forlorn dance,

drawing silvery threads of elegance,

trickling down to dreamers, in each one’s home.

But the moonbeams writhed with shadows between,

silver, moon-borne purity, could not stay.

Dreams and nightmares both, from chaos, saw birth.

/

Lonely, intrepid star saw life, death, birth,

collecting ancient stories from her dance.

Though she mourned her curse, that she could not stay,

she basked in isolated elegance.

No constant friends, but a thousand between;

she could claim the heavens, infinite home.

/

Burning things can’t stay; she found elegance,

hurtled from birth, in a forsaken dance,

loved the in-between, and, in death, found home.

//