I will go on about stars and their families, systems
big enough to catch hope in, big enough to show us
just how small our worries are. Democracy
gone? Look up. Look at the bright suns. There are too many
not to hold other worlds, other lives. What do those beings
wonder? What do they create? I expect this life
to provide awe, ideas that reshape the limits
of matter, thoughts carried on the complex currents
of physics. Or of story. I don’t mind
if instead of forward to the marvelous peoples of the universe
it’s back to primeval forests, trees big as houses
next to those slender enough to wade through mythic soil
so we wake to new faces in gray-brown bark.
We offered treasure to the deep still places
hoping the earth would love us back. We knew the lives
of badgers and stoats, deer and ravens, as well as our own.
It wasn’t easy. It isn’t now. It won’t be, ever. But
I want to be wild, lost, off the edge. I’ll always open
that door in the sacred oak and take my place
in the cosmos of moss, tiny green lights aglow
with the promise that there is more than this.
—
Poet’s Note
There’s so much anxiety as Election Day approaches, and good reason to expect violence and lies even if Trump is defeated at the ballot box. Sometimes a different perspective can help us get through the days, like the vast distances of the universe. And we have to nurture the best of humanity, too. As Jack Gilbert wrote, “We must admit there will be music despite everything.”
—
Katherine Riegel’s lyric memoir, Our Bodies Are Mostly Water, is forthcoming from Cornerstone Press in 2025. Her books include Love Songs from the End of the World and Castaway. Her work has appeared in Brevity, One, Orion, and elsewhere. Co-founder of Sweet Lit, she teaches online workshops.
