far away in the night sky

Wednesday, August 30, 2017 poem

Far away in the night sky
past our moon and past our sun
out among the oldest & coldest corners of the Universe
exists a lone, small star.
And around that star
orbits a lone, small planet.
On this planet lies a tiny creature,
no bigger than a pebble, who sleeps day in and day out
for every day of the year, save one.

While it sleeps, it dreams of a far-away
world where strange beings make music and tell stories
and dance together at night and work and play together in the day.
In the tiny creature's dreams, this far-away world has colors
and sights and even smells unlike anywhere else
in the whole universe.

And on the one day it wakes,
this tiny creature crawls out of it's burrow
out onto the open planet to stretch it's small legs,
& enjoys feeling the light of the lone, small star on it's body.
And when it's time to go to sleep again,
one of the last things it does is ask the stars
to send their warmest light to that strange, far-away planet
and to the strange, beautiful beings that call that planet home.

In one of the many enchanting coincidences of the Universe,
the number of times this creature has asked the stars to send
their warmest light is exactly the number of times
the stars twinkle in the sky of that strange, far-away planet.

So every time you see a star flicker when you look into the night sky,
you can feel a little warmer knowing you're sharing the light of a little creature
dreaming it's warm dreams out among the stars.