Look Up
By Dustin Howard
Perhaps the singularly most wonderful and powerful thing about poetry is its ability to connect people across time and space. Poetry transcends age, race, ethnicity, national borders, and even time itself. There’s an element to poetry that, like many art forms, explains the endurance of poetry as an art—the human element. Poetry is one of the few art forms where a work can exist for a thousand years and still have emotional resonance with the reader.
Consider, if you will, the poem Bright star, would I were stedfast as thou art by John Keats, a man who had no formal training as a writer—in fact, he was training to be a surgeon—which he wrote in the prime of his tragically young life. In the poem, the speaker has his head resting upon the body of his lover, and looking out at a bright star in the night sky. He wishes that he could be as steady as that star, ever unchanging in that moment where he lies in stillness with his lover listening to her breath, simply wanting to hold onto that moment in time forever.
I propose to you, dear reader, that there has been at least once in your life when you have felt a feeling such as that; a deep longing or yearning for the ability to freeze a single moment in time forever. Perhaps it was a time your first love held you close, or the birth of a child, or simply a moment of pure bliss in life. Here is a man who lived some 200 years ago who recorded in verse his feelings that we today still experience. As a reader, to discover that kind of connection is deeply rewarding; it creates within us a sense of continuity or a tangible thread to our past, and that’s because of the human element. That’s the wonder and power of poetry! So the next time you find yourself on a late-night stroll, look up. Look up at those stars, the same ones Keats looked to, and consider: what is my connection?
Stargazers
©Dustin Howard 2022
An ancestor moon waxes and wanes over
ocean waves telling tides to ebb
and time to flow,
bids gatherers’ harvests
to bountiful fruition
and hunters who look to Orion
for guided inspiration
move as nomads over prairie grasses
seeking that which feeds
the meek and hungry masses.
Heliocentric heretics,
who seat the sun at the center of all,
our ancestor brethren,
survey the heavens
studying celestial bodies
looking ever upward
to the faintest flickers
in the indigo sky,
what lies beyond Heaven and Earth,
captivates our learned minds
with wondrous childish mirth.
Rotating constellations
traced by azimuth and astrolabe,
the sailor’s means by which to steer,
guide wayward ships across the sea
probe the vastness of this body
and unite our scattered kind
in maritime exploration
follow not the errant albatross,
but the North Star in navigation.
The ancient comets which come round,
constant as an orbital clock
counting centuries that slip by,
those wished-upon stars—
the very same on which we wish—
carry with their shattered tails
the hopes and dreams of
infinitesimal human beings
seeking understanding of greater things
beyond ourselves.
We plant flags in ancestor moon,
land our rovers in the Martian dune,
and peek beyond the stellar vale,
past the Oort and cosmic gale,
using lens and powered scope
probe the vastness of this space
dream the dare that is to hope
of life beyond the human race.
Photo courtesy of Dustin Howard.
Dustin Howard is the current City of Reno Poet Laureate and the Advancement Associate at Sage Ridge School in Reno, Nevada. He is the author of the supernatural thriller novel, Breakvale, and Engrams, his first collection of poetry. Dustin will also lead a Humanities in Nature walk on Thursday, June 9, 2022, from 6:00 -7:00 pm at Reno’s Damonte Ranch Park. Click HERE to learn more and register.