Stars revisited

Good old Facebook. Today it reminded me of various things that happened on this day over the last few years. There was a photograph of my then six year old daughter with a large plastic horse, lots of posts about working on new songs (now all complete and available on Bandcamp) and, from 2012, a poem about my dad. It’s not a great poem but it worked well enough at the time for me to let it out.

I love reading and studying poems but I don’t write many anymore because I’m just not good enough to write anything that stands up to the 24 hour test. That is, being able to be read 24 hours later and not seem like crap. This poem though, this poem was written in the heat of the moment and posted before I could get too precious. Then I forgot it, until today. For once in my life I actually wrote a poem that works. For the record, my dad died two months after this was written.

The stars are markers of the past.

They tell the tales of giants and dwarves.

Their light conveys the stories although

That light has left them long ago.

Just like the boy with a catapult,

Whose lengthy journey through the years

Has stretched out and almost erased

His adventures.

The stars are makers of the past.

They are calling,

My dad,

Every morning.

Every morning as they fade

They invite him

To join them.

The twinkle,

Twinkles in his eyes,

But one day soon,

The stars’ delicate light,

Will catapult him,

Into the past.