MOONTIME YULETIDE
Christmas, when it isn't
MOONTIME YULETIDE I stood until the stars came back Those round discs, silver and tin, that spiralled down into the rock. They seemed more like the change in your pocket. Precious, pointless, little circles you pressed in my palm. But ‘pennies’ would have been less impressive, I suppose. I stare at these long-lost vessels, like you stared at those tokens, My focus split in half, though I never leave that ground. They were never the real treasure, despite the excitement in my eyes I pretend I don’t understand why. You weren’t ever here, after all, To see the language, garbled and muffled on radio frequency Change to make this pattern of space, the hours of light, Become a word we translate as ‘cominghome’. I imagine you saying it, and I imagine you doing it, Hanging stars against the half-moon window. But then your voice keeps echoing back, With that word that began with C and ended in grief. And although I know you won’t step through, I still stare at those pitch black hatches. I can’t help how my stomach still rises, While my foot taps a tune I only knew as whispers. Maybe it’s the way the old planet sits in the sky, this time of cycle, Or the changing colours of the settlements. Maybe it’s just the knowing that I’ve been here before (There always was something about revolutions). But maybe, when they picked this day, They thought of that once young man, with copper in his pocket. Maybe there is something in that birth, after all Some joy, that the death never took away (or never even could) And then the hatch opens, the angels walk out . I just think of you.
