Galaxy

I have never been very taken with stars, or planets, or space.
There are three exceptions.
These are them.
I like comets, Pluto, and, the moon—

comets, our spectacular leftovers,
Pluto, the excommunicate,
Moon, little sister to sun—gloomier, moodier, less conventionally attractive perhaps, but not
without her own seductions.

Can you see the pattern?

The constellations and consolations that others find in the heavens elude me.
I find the night sky utterly dipperless.
I see neither belts nor bears.
I see only a disordered, dark unknown, which neither calls nor comforts me.

Until—

in Sunday School, Vanessa tells the story
of men who are earthsick—
astronauts orbiting in space
looking down through little windows,

yearning, burning in their breasts,
to be back where they have always been.
They wonder at the distance. And, I know also,
what it is to have too much space.

 

 

Kerri Fisher teaches social work at Baylor University in Waco, Texas. She is a regularly invited trainer on cultural humility/anti-oppressive practices, and she enjoys exploring matters of race, identity, and spirituality through poetry and creative non-fiction. Her writing has been honored by the Writer’s League of Texas and the Mayborn Literary Nonfiction Conference.