Next

Stand on distant shores

No sun no moon no star
no breath of wind no wash of wave no bird no tree no stone
no city mountain lake or stream
not even word or name
is what you know

This place is not your place

This unfamiliar world beneath a purple sky that turns around an orange sun a thousand years from home is not the world you know

This sky of constellations that you stand beneath is no familiar sky

This dark, this shore, this earth, this dome is not the night you know

I dream of distant scenery
of smells
and sounds
and sunset imagery that
never
can I know again

so far away

as distant as the grave

sundered by a gulf more wide than a thousand years

too far to cross

This is not the sky you understand and
not the night you know

Go back and never come again to look up at the sky
and search for that far distant star that once you called your home

It is not there

no eye nor photographic telescope can pick it out from here
nor say if it still lives

Go back

stranger

and do not look again
into this dark and moonless unfamiliar sky

It is not the sky you remember and
not the night you know

copyright © 1998 by john valley. all rights reserved.