Focal

Two-by-four planks line the walk beside me,
Buried into earth swaying inward and out.
Misaligned, bending and reaching,
Under the weight of age and memories bursting.

My mother taught me early that the sun and stars
Consume the darkness to give us a world to love.
She taught me their web of stories amongst the daylight
Of a kitchen table strewn with star charts drawn by hand.

Through the gaps there is a scene flickering.
Blue steps lead gently up to a porch of solid oak.
My mother sits atop them, a nest of blankets
Beside her with two Tigger slippers peeking out.

She holds the telescope up for me to gaze
Through its magnificent eye,
The stars span ever onward though
I know I will only ever see a precious handful.

I know the light from the stars is too far
For their warmth to reach us but oh,
How I wanted to feel it sink into my skin
And burrow into my soul and bones.

Though that was long ago now,
Before my mother threw away
Cracked lenses and hefty tomes 
On the passage of the universe around us.

Before my father saw less of our eyes 
And more of our gazes spanning ever upward.
I did not realize then how lonely 
Loving two star lovers must have been.

Once I saw a quick flash of light falling and asked my mother
how the stars escaped the sky and she would laugh and tell me
The stars were home they just wanted to be free,
and though she smiled at my father I don’t think he liked the answer.

The fence becomes straight and painted freshly white.
I see my father on the porch, he hesitates before the telescope
Then grabs it ‘round the neck in two fists, knuckles white,
And takes it silently inside.

I hear the shatter, metal on impacted glass, almost delicate.
He returns to the porch looking like a heavy weight
Rests upon his shoulders, but his wrinkles smoothed over,
Reduced by a time measured in the years I had been counting stars.

He lays the telescope down where it had once been standing,
And drops a handful of shards of glass, twinkling in the light.
His lip quivers, a look I had never seen upon my father before,
But he breaths deep, and easy, and turns his back.

The fence ends, and I am standing on the curb above the road,
The asphalt an endless abyss of tar, reflective flecks and
a swallowing sticky black, I step off onto solid ground.
I had always wondered how the telescope fell.