I Tried to Count the Stars

I Tried to Count the Stars

(“Jesus answered, ‘The foxes have holes to live in. The birds have nests to live in. But the Son of Man has no place to rest his head.’” Luke 9:58)

I tried to count the stars last night and
thought of you.
How naïve to believe they were
just lanterns swinging from an overhead dome.
I tried to measure the miles from them
to where I stood
and fell asleep as the earth turned toward morning.
I tried to count the years in our days and
wondered how we mourn a friend’s passing one morning,
and attend a christening the next.
Light and dark fight it out for our
attention. We are membranes with ears,
eyes diffusing summer leaves in sharp relief.

I assume I have passed you on the street a thousand times,
or met you on an overpass while chrome machines roar
underneath.

I tried to think my way through the last two decades,
pray my way into unconscious flights of ecstasy.
I have missed every face I’ve known,
have remembered la anciana begging on a sidewalk
in Cancun.
I’ve trimmed my roses before the snow fell and waited
until May to watch them bloom.
I’ve seen the rain spit up dust on a Texas afternoon.
I have swallowed my song too long
fearing the tune would elude me.

But I’ve watched, though I rarely see,
your way through the galaxy and your
face that dropped tears on the cheeks of a child,
on the forehead of a child,
on the first blue tulip, the first daffodil.
And I wonder how many abodes we count looking
for home.