Moonlight and memories Tales of quieter times When the street lamps didn’t burn Their imprints onto the sky Obscuring the stars We huddle beneath the endless expanse Indigo blackness lit by the halo of cities Above us, pinpricks of brilliant white Flashing red moving slowly Marking the trail of passengers Navigating the great dome of sky We recall our ancestors Who set their sails by the stars Told tales of greatness Diamond-set forever in the velvet darkness Who sat in the cavernous moonless nights Where midnight pooled about their feet Untouched by neon and halogen Overwhelmed by uncountable worlds Hanging above them I can make out Orion’s Belt, the tail of the Great Bear Who have doubtless held countless names And stories in the fullness of time I can sit in the shadow of Venus And wonder how much further will my children travel And their children Through the ravenous cold of space To planets so far that the most powerful telescope Has only caught a glimmer of their suns Somewhere in that aching vastness Perhaps someone like me, but so, so different Stands beneath their own vaulted sky Under constellations that I would not recognize For whom Earth is just a gem studding the belt Of some alien hero What do they dream of when they see the sky Lit up under their alien moons And peer into an infinite galaxy Infinite possibilities Ours For the taking