Stardust

Third of three poems

I remember the time when we sat
On the wind-driven blades of grass.
We surveyed with somber silence
The scope of the darkening land.
The heavens on fire,
The mid-August rush of the skies
Kept us out
And we couldn’t quite understand why
After God created the world in seven days
He had leftover materials
Floating in space.
Could they have failed the test of perfection?
They fell from the heavens as waste.
We sat hardly thinking
There was a magic in them
Pieces primarily sourced—
Delivered to earth to rain down in love
From the soft hands of a provident God.
We felt it between us that night,
Though we hardly realized how
Or why.

Mr. Modernism,
What now lies in your thoughts?
The stardust is present
And proving you wrong
Chaucer, our long-obscure father,
Seemed to know what was best. For the daffodils
Broke forth in their beauty at dawn
After having battled the snow
Their voice prophetically stated
That death, once again,
Was a farcical show
Found in Winter—
Cloudy came blizzards, to hide Autumn’s wane
To restore white to the whiteboard
Which turned into green.
You must have been confined in the fog
Of London
Long grown blackened by men.
Turn from your Wasteland;
Return to your homeland,
And taste of its fresh, virgin air once again.

The flower,
The pool,
The river,
The rain:
They all became one when they looked
To their source in the clouds.
For they all owed their birth
To the beat of the sun
Who was dependably found,
Though sometimes discretely,
Ever upon us:
The heart of a Father-like God.
Who, though He moved clouds
To creep in and to swell,
He always penetrated
With just enough warmth
For us to always be able to tell
That the casting of shadows one day would fleet.
If we let the rains fall in their time,
The sky would clear up
And the blue skies would come,
And ever more thankful,
We’d be restored to the sun.

Like that day when in sorrow
I sat in the valley east of Eden,
You came, and calmly gave me that smile
That signified my chance for the journey had come.
We meshed in our clasp,
Felt the pulsing of blood;
I don’t think I could have ever
Quite anticipated
The Flood,
When our worlds became baptized,
And we remained in the lands east of Shinar
Where God built us a tower to reach heaven.
I could not believe He would condescend,
Yet He did and for that
We could not help but laugh
‘Til our sorrows forever
Fell lost in the past.

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