Starz

I've seen them, alone and falling  
as though excommunicated  
by some angry church, burning  
from judgment through the atmosphere  
until swallowed by the deep  
throat of outer darkness.    
 
As a child I would wonder where  
they landed. I looked for any sign;  
glints of light that would reveal a colony  
of outcasts; soul mates I could migrate  
with, like a school of silver fish darting  
in time across an ocean wall.    
 
I thought I found them once, thousands  
of them floating listlessly on a pond,  
cooling after millions of light years  
of burning, unawares of being watched.  
But it was a mirage, the cruel joke  
of the momentary sun behind a cloud.    
 
Somewhere along the years I forgot  
or grew up, until photographing a bush  
I noticed the pulsing fire in the starried  
arms of a stem that once held an Heirloom  
Rose. It was vulnerable, exposed, wilting  
under the breath of a burning sun.    
 
For the briefest of moments I felt the sting  
of yearning in my solar plexus that accompanies  
nostalgia of the deepest kind. Like an  
ancient love recognized, or an epiphany  
revealing nothing is ever lost through death,  
despite how much we change.    
 
~