The Peril of a Distant Star (2000)

Walking alone, shaken by previous company
I wander for a moment, anxious for something unknown.
The world around me is cold and indifferent;
I imitate it willfully, giving myself to untextured thought
and surrender to the curse of introspection.

The soft grass beneath my feet, I notice where I have come.
This place that is known in memory; this place that is felt in the senses.
I look to the bench and can feel warmth; remember warmth.
The bench is inviting with a soft glow of light, but I stop.
Not this bench. Not now as I am; incomplete.

A few steps away is another; much less feeling there, more appropriate.
I sit down. The wood is the same, the form the same.
It is different only because it means nothing. I sit and watch.
No thought now at all; only perception. The glow of light radiates
and yet falls just short of my seat. I am hugged by darkness.

I accept the cold caress of the night and lie down. Thought skitters across a void.
Distant lightenings reveal a clear sky. “Just like me inside,” I think,
“Vast and dark and empty.” But I am wrong. A light breaks through invisibly.
Perhaps a star so distant that its light cannot be seen. It shines.
So distant that its light cannot fail to be perceived. It shines.

Light. It cries in light and shudders, falling in light.
Failing, flailing, and falling. It shines. Faltering, it shines.
But it wavers. With a shudder of dread, all the light wavers.
With a shriek of hate and fearfull rage, the light brightens, still unseen.
With a gasp of energy spent, it dims. It dies.

I gasp with fear and grasp at the rails of the bench. I must not fall.
I hang precariously from the brittle wood, dangling from the belly of the world
and the sights about me pitch and sway in a sickening rhythm.
I swing my legs to the earth and cautiously apply my weight,
hoping the gravity is enough to keep me from falling off. I must not fall.

The blood pumps fiercely in my body, I can hear its rush.
My feet stumble across the earth beneath them; not much feeling there.
Everything I see is new and frightening. I know what everything is; I know them.
Yet everything is somehow unfamiliar; I cannot feel them.
I stumble along the path that I know; along a path that I do not perceive.

Today I wake and look outside, at the world I am on.
I walk outside. The world is the same, the form the same.
It is different only because it means nothing. I sit and watch.
At night I hope to find the light of a distant star that will not be there.
Perhaps I never will. Perhaps it never was.