we are erasing the stars.
they have special terminology for this:
glare, skyglow, light trespass.
when i was a little girl, i remember waiting for a midnight train in DC…
standing on the platform in the drizzle and asking my parents
“why is the sky pink?”
as i got older i stopped thinking of it as pink
and started to call it the noncolor: pinkish, gray, purple, bruised, unreal skyglow
the opposite of all color.
soaring above America i reflect that
where i’m from, we don’t have grids of light, but curlicues of it
little winding spirals that decorate the blackened land.
there are no dark spaces anymore.
i don’t know whether to be more afraid of this invasion of light,
or my strange intuition that during my lifetime,
all the lights will go out
and all the noise will fall silent.
we are erasing the stars and i am of two minds on this.
firstly. when the lights go out
a lot of people are going to die.
it will be cold
and i might have to eat porridge and flatbread every day
just like most of this planet’s inhabitants
and there will probably be dust.
and no showers, and bugs and disease and no antibiotics to stave them off…
ok, i admit: i can’t really conceive of what it will be like when the lights go out.
i have had glimmers though, and an uneasy feeling permeates all of them.
on the other hand, i miss the stars.
the flickering television is no substitute for the communal campfire.
i miss the people who i might circle around campfires with,
and i miss holding hands together in prayer…
i miss sleeping upon the Earth herself, in all her hardness and softness and dirtiness;
i miss feeling real genuine joy when Ra rises in all his strength above the eastern horizon.
there’s a lot i don’t know.
i don’t know how long it will be before this whole neon structure
collapses under its own weight, and i don’t know how the beams of the tower will give way. i don’t know how to prepare for it. and i don’t know that we have to wait for it to fall before creating something different…
there is hope, because underneath the neon confusion,
we can still hear the beat (of Her heart) and we are still
moved to dance.
(i heard that a return to the Paleolithic is not necessarily a return of the Paleolithic.)
(would the Real come back if the lights went out? like when the movie’s over… or when the curtain falls, and the applause subsides, and the reality comes back on…)
we just have to listen for the beat…
laughter will be our best strongest ally
and we can use the empty fountains for flowerbeds
wild unperfumed hair flowing from our heads
and after a few weeks, we won’t even realize that we smell.
there will be a riot of greenery
a rusting of machinery
we’ll go swimming every day with fishes tickling at our toes
lie upon the sandy beaches and watch languid river flows.
we’ll learn to tell the weather by the clouds
learn to identify animals by their sounds
make our own weird musical instruments
out of leftover unidentifiable junk
tell long winding stories on rainy days and
put on plays for nobody but ourselves.
there’ll be
an abundance of ruins to explore
and a dazzlement of stars.
listen
i want to tell you, as an old woman
i want to tell you, as a little girl
and as a warrior
and as a lover
whatever happens, don’t get scared.