Poetry

What happened to all those wishes
we sent into the skies of childhood?
Blowing-out-the-candles wishes.
Back-yard star-watching wishes.
Bedroom wishes, made behind locked doors.
Did they all just freeze and shatter
like helium balloons in the atmosphere?
Or did some find a higher frequency,
beyond the range of human detection?
Perhaps some traveled deep into space,
like the pulse of neutron stars, silently
sweeping the universe in search of a place to land.
Perhaps. But I suspect most are much closer
than that – still here, orbiting invisibly
around our daily lives. And perhaps
they’re why we’re still here,
and why most of the things
that tried to kill us are there,
long-gone, lost in the darkness
that holds the stars.

​

The Hooghly Review, April 2024.