Orbit
A Poem
I used to think we might spin and spin and fall off or that we might stop spinning and just fall.
And I guess by used to I mean just a second ago childhood ideas, childhood fears sometimes
most of the time, remain. I would think about eternity and infinity
and get dizzy with the concept. I would be up all night.
Mortality has always bothered me. It didn’t make sense
to be here then to not, to be somewhere else maybe, before and after
to be this and than that, perhaps shifting into forms, reincarnation
failing and trying again — until what? Until we get it right?
I would believe in that if there were more signs around me that people
bad in the past, came back, new forms new lives, and got it right
but patterns seem entrenched a look at history can show the same type of people
burning witches in 1600’s at stakes, burning witches in 2000’s online,
the embers and smoke are still with us in new forms, atoms still here
floating up drifting up
to the stars who have remained through it all we rotate, we orbit, there’s gravity, we are safe
but oh how we disappoint.
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.
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 recent wonderful Star Week poems:
Thank you Kim McKinney
Thank you Samantha Lazar
Thank you Carolyn Riker
Each one a gift, each one different, each one shining here for us!
And for my most recent Star Week contributions
Sigh, I found out my friend Dana passed away. She is a star.
And, my personal favorite
Thank you for being here, poets and poetry lovers. ❤
