Like you, I read a fair bit, and sometimes a poem or piece of prose affects me, and I want to share it with others. Sometimes these pieces are even related to looking up, or space, or even equipment and gear. So I’ve added a new category for our posts here: Poetry & Prose.

To start, here’s a poem I wrote that was rejected by AstroPoetica (not all my poems are rejected; see this Winter’s Canary, an on-line poetry magazine: http://hippocketpress.org/canary/ ; it contains a poem of mine called “In the Neighborhood of Full Quiet”):

The Stars Will Outshine Us

We say we know the universe began

and might not end. We say it is open

or closed or flat. It doesn’t matter. Death

comes fast for us, and after us the stars

keep spinning out their light for a hundred

trillion years. And after that the universe

might slowly slow its inky, empty cold

for trillions upon trillions more.

Look,

we mean that we are lonely . . .

And this—All of us together, lonely.

All of us together, a single face, an eyeblink . . . a wink.

Michael Day

P.S. When Grady died as he was being born (not a single breath), I was struck deeply by how short life is. Not how short life can be; how short it is. For all of us. How many days do each of us have left? How many breaths? Heartbeats?