The Unreachable Light

Upon the vault of heaven’s boundless deep,

where mortal longing finds no resting place.

The ancient stars keep vigil.

They do not know us.

They do not need us.

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O thou bright scattered fires,

how long have you been burning

above the ruin of our years,

above the grief

of every man who ever lay

on summer ground

and felt the sky

open a wound in him

he did not know was there?

★ ☆ ★ ☆ ★

Each star was old

before this earth drew its first breath,

before the mountains shouldered up from the deep,

before the first human voice

broke the long silence

and called out

to no one.

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And still they burned.

The sailor dissolved beneath those fires.

The shepherd boy forgot his flock entire.

The poet died mid-sentence,

reaching upward,

his unfinished longing

still rising, still climbing

toward something

that has never once

looked down.

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I have stood in open fields at midnight

and felt my own brevity

as relief,

to be so fleeting, so poorly made,

and still be granted

the grace of looking up

at something

that will never end.

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Is this the oldest human ache,

to love what cannot love us back,

to burn toward permanence

knowing we are made of leaving,

that every life is just

a long, slow letting go?

★ ☆ ★ ☆ ★

Go then, thou radiant dead.

Keep your bright stations.

Outlast our empires, our temples, our spoken words.

★ ☆ ★ ☆ ★

We ask for no signs from you.

We ask for no mercy.

We ask only this,

let us stand beneath you

for one unguarded moment,

undone and open, and know

we were here.

That we looked up.

That we ran toward beauty

the way a man runs toward home

when he has been too long away.