Starforce

Ó 2001

by Don Lanigan 

When the light subsides,

A phantasmic tide abides,

‘Til the prime presides.

Twinkling in the dusking time, the issue of the night.

Spatterings of silver stipple fleck the raven sky.

Starforce thrusts me, shed of shape and substance,

Soaring aloft over smoky shrouds of stardust.

I am swept into the torrent of the starstream,

Flowing like a gleaming crystal cascade,

Spindrift, joyous on the scend of rolling waves,

Whipped to frothy white by astral winds,

Blowing wild across the fetch of ebon ocean.

I would stumble, wonder-struck, but for Polaris,

Fixed in constant aspect at the starwheel hub.

With my hand a silhouette, I wear a star glove,

Fingers splayed against the gemmy pavé.

When I close my hand, I grasp the heavens.

Perception and reality merge into one.

I am at peace, simpatico with the firmament.

Luminescent lady, abbess of the stellar sanctum,

Infuses the billowing banks with a pearly lustre.

Moonstruck, I slip away like hourglass sand.

Racing through the worm-holes of my mind,

Esoteric thought collapses time and distance.

Life is only a way-stop in the voyage of the soul,

Just a tiny twist of eternity’s winding spindle.

As we bide, ingenuous, a mindless ticking bitch

Saps our meager span and withers our aspirations

Until the grisly priest assaults our dignity,

And, in a stinging instant between iterations,

Casts us ungraciously into our final furrow.

Now the starwheel sets to spinning,

Will you lose or are you winning?

Do you believe, or did you scoff?

Is this the landing or the takeoff?

Is it black or is it red?

You’ll have an answer when you’re dead.