The night’s dark upcountry. Hold my hand tight. There’s
Polaris, low in the sky over opuntia and telephone lines.
The astronomers say that when we gaze into the night,
we are looking back in time. All the stars we see are
not where we see them, and we are the only ones
to see those lights shine where they shine in our sky.
I smile because you’re newly nine, and I’m time passing.
This little grin covers the fear and cheer in one less day
every day. Mine is an age when every moment marks me.
Tonight, watching that fat toad bounce his chubby butt
across the driveway nearly made me weep. I’m all right.
There’s comfort in constant stars and a cool breeze
from the mountain. All the nonsense about time whines
in my ear as we open the whole starstruck sky together
and touch the constellations one by one. Astronomers
tell us everything in the universe is falling away from us,
and when I hold your hand, I wonder how I will ever find
the strength to let it all go, if I don’t hold tight right now.
This poem first appeared in Lāhaina Noon (2005).
—
Eric Paul Shaffer is author of eight volumes of poetry, most recently Green Leaves: Selected & New Poems. Others include Even Further West; A Million-Dollar Bill; Lāhaina Noon; and Portable Planet. More than 650 individual poems appear in over 300 reviews in the USA, Australia, Canada, England, Ireland, Japan, New Zealand, Nicaragua, India, Iran, Scotland, Singapore, and Wales. Shaffer lives on Oʻahu with his magnificent other Veronica and a delightful little dog named Kona.
