We Will Always Have the Stars

Infinity is dark blue –

not black – and not empty.

Space, understand

is neither infinite nor black,

though it is vast beyond imagining,

teeming with life,

roiling between light

and the absence of light,

ever-changing and alive.

Weirder things that we can imagine

become and un-become.

Life is determined, tenacious.

Things are born;

Things die;

Things get reborn.

Space is the greatest cauldron,

churning and heaving

with every possibility.

Some stars are fixed,

some stars are not.

Keen-eyed youths stood

side-by-side on hilltops

with the wisest elders

noting precisely the rising and falling

of every celestial thing,

over nights short and warm;

over nights long and bitter.

On broad plains

marked with sticks,

marked with stones,

angles calculated

with all possible precision,

observatories rose,

Born of stone and sweat,

holy places

where the sky could speak.

And we listened

and we learned

and we changed

and we became

and we adapted

and we explored

and we listened

and we learned

and we changed

Cold starlight flowed

from midnight-drenched skies

through the stones

into minds finely tuned,

where it was warmed

by blood and flesh;

where it transformed

in serpentine splendor,

into That Which Cannot Be Told.

But the stars were not our only teachers

in that time, and long before;

Trees and flowers

stones and water

creatures of earth and air,

great and small;

Every one a teacher

or a friend

to those willing to listen.

We learned which herbs relieve pain,

or stop bleeding,

or bring sleeping,

or relieve fevers,

or strengthen the heart,

or stop coughing,

by sitting on the ground;

By being humble enough

to make friends with plants.

We learned how to hunt

and how to hide.

We learned by laying on our bellies

in the doting dirt;

We learned perched in trees,

singing to the leaves;

We learned sitting perfectly still

by the hives,

covered in the music of bees.

We found our music

in air and fire,

in stones and water.

Inspiration came;

That was no problem.

She was always a breath away.

We cultivated her gifts

from flowers and fungi

to keep her closer still.

In time we became giants.

Our reach exceeded Rome’s,

so they poisoned us

with their polluted religion;

cut us down to size;

Taught us to revile

those most revered

as unclean, as chattel.

We often refused to comply.

They taught our young men

that might makes right;

That women are to be controlled;

That female ideas are evil;

That the Goddess –

our loving Mother,

our lover, our sister –

is an abomination in the eyes

of their angry, bloodthirsty, male God.

And oh! how they learned.

And oh! how they burned

those learned sisters

with their herbs and potions,

with their books and their bags;

with little explosions and dark

smoke that induced hallucinations

for miles around as the air raged,

frenzied and vengeant.

In the end, our people could

take no more terror.

They fell, became less,

accepted Rome’s lord and savior

at the point of a sword,

and duly became ashamed

of the power and the brilliance

and the loving and the learning

and the truth of our being.

But She finds a way,

always, always.

Our stone observatories,

holy places where the sky speaks,

terrified the interlopers

and they kept well away;

And so they stand,

and we remember –

We will always have the stars.

Need help remembering who you are? You’re on the right track. Keep in touch. 

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