Night Sky

Red haze;

An ochre-mud static paints itself over our retreating darkness.

We all see the comet,

White-eyed, silver-haired,

A spot of paint spilled across void-coloured velvet,

Fine, misty tendrils; still spelling out the end.

He reminds me of cupid;

He always has time to bring happiness to others,

To fill whatever gap exists in their heart.

Not like me.

Self-absorbed.

He twists in and out of me, a supple vine;

His chin rested, bony, on the boniness of a pale, stripped shoulder.

He reminds me, when I want to forget them,

Of my own so-many failings.

These are last days.

He reaches over and touches my hand: it's all right.

As if!

But his probing goes on, his soft words, his dark honey:

it's all right, as long as we're together;

His voice becomes a dancer in my ear,

A feather-touch, a breath, a dream.

All right: that's a thing that can no longer be.

How can emptiness that deep be all right?

How can glittering void, and crushing gravity;

How can the long, elastic graveyard of the cosmos,

If that's all that's going to be left?

This dasher across the sky knows nothing;

Rushing unbridled, racing into our unwilling arms.

We come to dust.

Poor players. Poor prancers.

The idiot's tale told only half-full,

The rest of it sliding off the page, sliding off the universe, untold, unheard, unread.

We all see the comet,

Blistering through the sky, shoving aside the stars,

Outshining the moon.

It turns one eye towards us, dips its head down, charges.