It’s that time of year again when the poets emerge from
their dishevelled hovels to grace the human world with their words. Yep, the 4th
of October is National Poetry Day in the good old UK, and the theme this year
is “Stars”.
I’ll be reading to the kiddywinks of Wester Hailes Education
Centre (The High School) with this theme in mind as they take up the
solar-reins and study “space” in their science classes. Unless you happen to be
one of these delightful child-folk then you can’t come, but here are a couple
of “star” themed poems from my fat and flailing hands to whet your pipe.
Breathing Space
Stars, don’t start.
Leave me to everything.
Burn away. Your glimmers
have made their point
though it’s lost.
Let me freewheel
in your distant light,
handstanding, vaulting
through the folds
of your surveillance.
If we’d wanted to see you
every minute of every night
we’d not have built houses,
built factories to drab your sky.
This is our canopy, our cloth
between your vastness
and the immediate universe
of our eyes.
Ghazal Jigsaw
From the small, closed window by our study table the stars
are set
like the pieces of your space jigsaw. I ask if you’re any
closer. The stars are set
you mutter as you slot another nook into the realised
corner, and yet
you seem unsure which cosmos you’ve just pieced together.
The stars are set
upon like foxes: your hands are hungry dogs. Your eyes are
ready trumpets.
Your mind is a horse and then aha, you’ve a northern glow and the stars are set
in their place with a satisfactory click. Another, two more and you’re a puzzle-rocket.
They look so still and steady with you, but through our
study window the stars are set
in more dimension than just those two. You drop a red dwarf
and I reach to grab it.
You continue. I open the window and, like the sails of
a ship, the stars are set.
Russell Jones
