The Past Poem by Charlotte Peters Rock

The past arrives exploded into starlight
in generation unaware of we
It lit the Aztec temple top
where sacrifice purloined itself
the Tartar hoard descending
and Gondwanaland belief
the manatee in gentleness
the reef where coral swimmers stay
and didn't claim its due - not yet -
nor force prostration gibbering
from any little entity we be

The starlight long dispersed
except by distances we see
Gone out gone dark and lit by other star
Unburied of necessity
Unbowed but scattered into space
A meteor in galaxy gone bankrupt
where vacuum darkness gathers in
the debris sailing near its space
Collector of infinity
where pins of light snuff silent out
unconscious of the entity we be

Here lit by sun's explosiveness
the picture that we think we see
is less our thought reality
and more the pyrotechnic
of a galaxy of blistered star
where lumps of cooling rock float round
tied into burning gravity
until its snuffing death lets go
its hand relaxing into dark
when nothingness will be the end of we
and any little entity we be

If all our ancestors arose
complaining at the cold space wind
a speck of nothing matter
in our little sun's exploding eye
A tiny diamond chipping in its necklace
The stars will still be shining in the sky
but they will show the distant past
long scattered into vagaries of time
which can't be put upon nor aimed for
nor support importance claimed as ours
nor any kind of entity we be

01Feb1997 CPR