Poem for David Bowie

Poem for David Bowie

        I have floated around the earth, and seen all the light disappear when the earth blocked out the sun, and the moon was blotted out by a far away space station or a close up tin can, because stars give off almost no light at all, you realize that when the sun and the moon are out of sight.

        Maybe all my loose talk against the moon, laying all humanity's sorrows at its door, was too quick and capricious.

        (in the 1800s Eastern Europe of my imaginary childhood, my alcoholic father, a terse black-haired man in suspenders and two pair of pants, used to curse the moon whenever things went wrong, blaming it for the frustration of all his hopes and the failure of his heart to be big enough to contain them.)

        Maybe the sun was for more than powering the plants that powered the delicious animals for me to eat in a room in the dark. Maybe the earth was for more than just a thing to sit on and learn about conspiracies and recipes.

        Maybe the moon was for us to sing to, and only sing to, all along. I taught myself one song, that I thought I could carry off, and sang it.

        And then I found the world again.