by Robert Carnevale ©

I have come to where I’ve always been.
The other hills seems quite at rest,
no telltale sign of thoughts like mine
milling like fireflies about their crowns.

The stars keep on with their burning.
How can we say they don’t care
where there’s no caring to begin with?
I am glad they don’t stoop to our question.

I knew before I came up here
that I would not be able to stay –
where I’ve always been, always will be –
still, it seems strange I can’t be where I am.

Jiménez wrote: “I am not I.”
And yet the world is still the world,
and these stars, with few exceptions,
are the same ones that always turned there.

Up here I am the strange one.
I should be granite. I should be light.
I should be space. I should be wind.

And yet, however unlikely,
I am as real and as present
as they are.

Yes, it’s the dark shows us the stars but, even more,
it is the stars show us the dark.
I really would stay if the night would.

But it would be rude of me to turn my back
on a star that has no back to turn
on the worlds it has set turning.

Thank you to David Kaplan for finding this gem.