The Stars

 

I walk out one evening

to look up at the sky.

Sunset becomes twilight, 

twilight is extinguished by

the deep black abyss, 

gradually punctuated by 

increasing clusters of stars.

Yet only the brighter ones 

reveal themselves.

There are two hundred 

billion trillion

strewn across this universe,

nodes in a body

inconceivably vast,

tremendous blooms

of erupting light,

held in balance

by an opposing force

of gravity,

an invisible tension

we’re also held in,

unaware. 

The corners of my eyes 

catch the faintest light

of other, further stars,

before they vanish 

into the blackness again.

 

This gigantic spangle expands

through incalculable spaces,

beyond the reach

of any of our science or religion,

though our yearning, searching expeditions

of the body, mind, and heart –

through physical or metaphysical space –

stretch our imagining toward 

the unutterable,

reaching for the unreachable.

 

      This chasm might yet be spanned

back toward us

by an intelligent universe,

by some unimaginable

yet dreamed of presence 

in that black void, studded 

with uncountable points of light

beyond our comprehension,

  offering itself to us

in the deafening silence, 

rekindling star traces within us,

inviting us into the wheeling dance

of the cosmos:

as if this endless universe itself 

is the body of a being

beyond all names. 

 

The stars, out of sight, out of mind

in daylight, generously appear

as darkness comes on. 

Sometimes, when it gets quite dark,

we can see the farthest,

we can finally begin to see

the light before us.

 

~ Stephen Gambill