Hi Paul:
Greetings from Manhattan. At the beginning of autumn on the mid-Atlantic coast, the starlight on cool, clear nights can pour down with a rare vividness. Here is the poem “September Sky,” from my 2009 collection, Green Vistas.
Best wishes,
Charles Pierre
“Sky Light” Ocean Grove, New Jersey. Paul Goldfinger photograph ©
September Sky
By Charles Pierre.
Countless stars in the spangled fury hold my eyes
in their glow, as I sit alone on a Northport beach
at midnight, the dark tide rolling with elastic shine;
the bits of kelp, quartz, shell, and bone sparkling
at my feet. I see starlight on the sails of a sloop
tacking across the harbor, on the hulls and masts
of yachts huddled at a marina, and on the roofs
of houses in the surrounding hills. And I wonder
at the power of this bold light to merge with all
before me, even coating the strokes of wet ink
from my pen as I write these words in my pad;
and wonder, too, that the stars burning above
might have died eons ago, their glow an illusion,
and the lines of intense light just long frayed ends.
JIMMIE BUFFETT “Stars Fell on Alabama.”