THIS NIGHT ON OUR DOMESTIC SCREEN

THIS NIGHT ON OUR DOMESTIC SCREEN

This night on our domestic screen

a simulacrum of a man

sheds withered, drifting words upon

politic policy. They seem

like drying leaves on desert wind.

For years I have been exiled from

prosperity or even pay.

And faith grows thin.

I step outside. The air

is clear and cool in summer darkness.

Here, far from urban glare,

galactic opalescence sheens

the scattered silver of the stars.

Our minds make maps. See over there

are five, bright stars... how hard it is to see

those five, bright suns and not the mental bars

we call the southern cross.

The constellations have real stars but not

the arbitrary lines of mind's convenient gestalt.

And nations have real people not

percentages and abstract, common aims.

Dry words from dry souls hungering for fame,

these are
less real than lines from star to star.