My Heart, My Stars
An Ode, Once More
My heart, my stars. My stars, my heart.
Who else could I be? Who else should I be? What can I expand upon? What should I give up?
If I am here, let me be here — with my heart as full as it is, with
the stars as full as they are.
Burning, burning, blowing up - I just read an article telling me that it is okay
To feel as I do because civilization is ending, and I wonder if maybe the world is too — it’s too much
to hold, too much to fear - we walk around the same space, monotony he said, sure I said
but I would rather this, rather this same old same old than risk it, catch it, get sick, worse
I would rather protect as many as possible and then save some of that energy for the rest of it — the
fighting off fascism, the calling out misogyny, the exposing the Lie as Baldwin called it, the Lie of America, that it’s all white and all right -
and then, while these pots are stirring, it’s climate change, it’s global warming it’s hunger, drought, floods, it’s genocide, it’s deforestation,
it’s endless endless endless. And my heart, and the stars, can only stay alert so long, can
only focus on so much, we sit and try to meditate and watch shows about eating clean, being healthy, not dying, and it all feels like a book, a movie
not real, not us, not this, not now my friend, dear soul, said everything is like molasses now
it is thick and we are covered in it we wade through like it’s 1919, a flood, a disaster for sure
a real event that we can look back on and think wow, absolutely wild — and then as with most things, I catch myself and
wonder if there will be people to look back at 2020 and think wow, or anything, or if we are really seeing it all fade out
roll the credits, it is all too much. I wrote this poem for my daughter’s hamster, who died and I
have to tell her still, I have to find the words, I have to figure out how to help my daughter be okay with
grief and mourning, and I think please 2020 let this be the worst of it, let this be as far as it gets, as bad as it gets -
I saw it die, poor thing, so tiny, so tiny, my heart my stars — I tried to feed it lettuce and put water on it’s little mouth and
it was not having it, shuddering, eyes closed — gone, RIP the poem went like this,
“The night before you died I had a dream about you
You, brown hamster Were being replaced or playing with or turning into
Dark brown hamster I wanted to share this
Because now you are dead”
Jenny Justice, Poet. Sociologist. Teacher. Mother. Woman. Author of Love in the Time of Climate Change and Reveal. You can read more of her poetry at Justice Poetic. Sign up for her newsletter here.
This is my last entry for Star Week. What a lovely week, what a lovely time. If you are seeing this now and want to keep star poems going — here’s the prompt, and also use the tag Star Week, this way anyone who wants to can go read all of our lovely star fueled poems.
The Star Week prompt, in brief: Now let’s look up — let’s dream, let’s aspire, let’s become overwhelmed with the biggest of big pictures. We are on a planet. It is in space. Space is vast. There are stars. They are beautiful. Let us continue reflecting and welcoming the second half of 2020 by sharing our hopes with the stars, the constellations, the elements of air and space, of whatever else is up there for us to gaze on, wish on, pin our hopes to. Let’s take the rest of July, surrounded by flowers, to stargaze.
- Submit your poems to any Medium publication.
- Tag them with all the things you wish to, but let’s create the tag Star Week,
- Let’s give 7 days of stargazing poems to the universe, to 2020, to each other.
- Also tag me in your poems too, because I want to be sure to see them!
For more on the prompt, and for a nice tribute and summary of the prompt that started it all, Floral Week, check this out:
Some of my favorites from the week, I think I did alright —
And now stay tuned because our very own Heidi Franklin is up next with Heart Week, which I of course, blended into this farewell to Star Week, just as I blended in Floral Week’s goodbye with Star Week’s hello in this poem, ❤
I want to thank Carolyn Riker, Priyanka Srivastava, Suryatapa, Arjan Tupan, Jack Herlocker, Samantha Lazar, James G Brennan, Melissa Coffey, Martin Rushton, Emma Laver-Scott, Jim McAulay🍁, Alex Kilcannon, Katie Rodante, Jeff Langley, Molly Skeen, Tapan Avasthi, Chelsea Marie, Heidi Franklin, Ryan Rodante, Kim McKinney, Joanna Vang, Christina M. Ward, Pretheesh Presannan, Timothy O'Neill, JMontes, Miguel Adrover, Denise Shelton, and everyone else who participated in the Star Week prompt. Onto the next week!
