A Pail of Stars | TYLER O’KEEFE

A Pail of Stars

TYLER O’KEEFE | VERMONT You said it’s dark and heavy where you are tonight, and so I went to fetch a pail of stars for you: they were too light for me to carry, but let me talk about them for you.

From the perspective of a star it matters not how far you are, how dark it is, nor count of hours past.

The darkest nights I’m skyward-drawn to meet a crowd of stars who skirt the edge of space— and some would call them mighty spheres of burning gas a trillion miles away— and I will call them tiny windows in the dome of outer dark.

And I will tell you there is out beyond the dome of outer dark a brightness past my telling.

And it is older than the world, and it is sooner than right now, and it is closer than this breath, and it is younger than this night,

and brighter, too, than any eye can see in full, wherefore it winks to us through little pinholes in the hood of night.

When summer dawns I’ll bring you rafting down the river of the sun, in tree-lined wonder wandering in flow of endless light.

For now I guess it’s winter: for now I’d like to sit beside you, empty pail in one hand and your hand in the other, and watch the black-draped theater of the night in star-pocked silence drifting over head.