Ode to the Starry Reach (1 September 2018)

- Montague Whitsel

When I think of the stars

gold and sapphire, ruby and emerald—

and how far away they are_

I am astounded in my aloneness;

lifted up to where I never thought to be—

where a human becoming is terribly free.                     1

When I see the stars up in the sky

I boggle upon the empty seas

and reel from a motionless sickness.

I feel unbounded by

tremendous vast circumferences

without a center—

sending all our dreams out centripetally

to the hedgeless realms of space.                                2

Reflecting upon the stars in the sky

I am drawn away from the sun

by a cosmic curiosity—

No more do I luxuriate in its brilliance

in summer, nor its white winter face.

The nearness of the sun, our star,

is reflected forever

in the distant humming of the stars—

x-rays, radio waves, gamma rays.                                3

“We can hear them sing, but we cannot

see their ghostly tracks.”

And when I think upon the stars,

sailing throughout the cosmos,

journeying in purposeless intent

further and further from us—

I long to shout to the nearest sun,

and reel-in its strangeness,

hoping to hear a shout in return,

before we fly forever out of range.                                4

“Lost in voids, un-renown for being Nothing,

we travel always further from our home.”

When I think of the stars,

Yellow and blue, green and red—

And how beautiful in power they are;

all sensed meaning goes horse-braying

across my earth-green horizons,

seeking for shelter—

and I am left to work it all out anew.                             5

And the stars are no more beacons;

much less gods, angels or saints –

they are epiphanies

in the stupendous darkness that percolates

beyond and within all existence.

The dark of the ever-expanding Night

embraces the light we seem to love

more, within a cold shivery veil,

and makes us think of the emptiness

beyond and within ourselves.                        6

When I meditate upon the cosmos—

I am in the Night, with the stars

and the planets in their orbits.

And there I stay, safe in Nothing—

encircled at random

by the circus of the stars in their galaxies.

Sombered in their wandering presence_

I feel myself illuminated at my own center.                    7

“The sun and the stars are one and the same,

near and far,

and from within the vortex of Nowhere

I can see their kinship realized.”                               8

And I think_

when we wish upon the stars—

shining, twinkling jewels set in black jet;

do we ever fear but that they are near,

and can be fathomed by mind and heart?

And are we not bewondered in their proximity,

reaching up to touch them

on the celestial stage above?

Do we not see in them our reflections?                         9

And so now,

when I meditate upon the stars,

topaz and cerulean, olive and crimson—

I stagger in their nearness;

and they show to me our kinship,

for we are all descendants of the stars;

children of the universe

which calls us to cognizance

of our own point of origin;

somewhere ‘back there’—

in the Deep Time of Space.              10

Amen.



[1] Originally written in 2003 and attributed to the fictional character of Edward Whittier, it is published at the end of my book, Heart and Hearth (2009) pp 601-603.