My First Flight to the Stars

Here I am despite a thousand flaws

Photo by Lance Denny on Unsplash

I stand below a blinding light
and strip bare my soul
naked but never terrified.
I don’t fear my end anymore
only losing you again.
What lies behind,
and comes after the metamorphosis
in the way of princes and thieves.
Who I was and could have been
to whom I am longer,
betrothed to pretend,
that I am nothing but an echo
with a last name almost faded out
a thousand generations
in my eyes and skin,
woven into my DNA,
is the curse of a family,
yet made.

A thousand deaths, and here I take
a single breath
Trembling with
an inner quake,
A mortal kneeling beneath a star
A tired man,
at an event horizon
where time flows backward
a salmon upriver
of time and un-time, remorse and joy
come together to make love.
to implore, the wisdom
of a blind seer.