Timeless

At night I look up,
when I’m taking out the trash
or returning home from shopping,
and I see the stars
shining their ancient signals.
I lose myself in their messages,
point them out to my kids:
Orion’s Belt in the south,
and in the north, the Big Dipper
that led so many slaves to freedom.

I think of all the people
who looked up and saw those same stars:
from the ancient Greeks
to the Hebrews and the Egyptians,
the knights of medieval England,
the Vikings and the Huns,
the Native American
waiting on the vast plain
for the coming stampede of buffalo,
the Nazi commander out with his wife
for a night on the town,
his kids home with a babysitter,
or the Jew in the concentration camp
shaking with fear,
awaiting his merciless fate.

Maybe Judas looked through the window
during the Last Supper
and saw the same stars I see.
Or maybe Alexander the Great saw them
as he contemplated the strategy of a coming battle.
Maybe Walt Whitman saw them
as he composed the lines of Leaves of Grass.
Or maybe Abraham Lincoln saw them
during a night of sleepless worry.

And when I breathe,
I could be breathing in the same dust particles
that Anne Boleyn breathed
as she stood on the scaffold.
I could be breathing in the oxygen
that fanned the flames
that burned Joan of Arc,
or the same oxygen
that had once been in MLK’s bloodstream,
or in the sweat of the Buddha,
or in the lungs of Mohammad,
or in the tears of Jesus Christ.

And as I contemplate
how I fit into all of that,
I think of the stars
and the mountains I’ve seen
that make me feel so small,
the green buds of spring,
the lushness of summer,
all the beautiful men and women
throughout the world’s history,
the brave warriors,
the relentless rebels,
the peaceful thinkers
the mothers and fathers and children,
all made timeless
by the poetry of words.

Mike Monroe 4/5/17