Bruce McRae: Faraway Suns

                        Midnight Dancers, by Mary Hatch, 2005, oil on canvas, 28” x 36”

 

 

Faraway Suns

And at night I love to listen to the stars. It is like
five hundred million little bells.
Antoine de Saint Exupery, The Little Prince

 

More stars than toads or moths or damselflies.
More stars than knots or wedding rings or roses.

From under my pillow I can hear the stars reflect
upon the hideous triumphs of function and form.
They influence my moods and fads in furniture.
The tears of the stars are what water our vegetable gardens.

Black stars. Furnaces of indigo. Of indefinite colour.
Stars that creak in the wind. That create weather.
Fallen stars I collect like acorns or raspberries.
Aloof stars, haughty and remaining at a distance.
Copper stars on silver wires, suspended from the impossible.
Flowers of wordless fragrances gathered at the river’s bend.
Little explosions taking forever to divulge their secrets
to the sleepy child, the fox, the worm, the hare.

A star-quelled night in a curious village.
I’m awake and listening to stories of epic proportions.
Tales of gods and animals, of eternal love and despair.
Saints wailing on a lush sward in Capricorn.
Souls in Aquarius singing an epoch-long mal aria.
Faraway suns, their arms burdened with purple planets.
Bright wells serving the will of the people, the strangest people,
who are very like us, and very much different,
who wish upon stars, studying their bones, and who wonder –
outlandish questions for which no answers exist.
Countless sums beyond number.

 

_______________
Bruce McRae

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