The sky its dark calls out in me
this prayer, my heartwood and sapwood
straining branches toward immaculate night,

and toward that jewel-whitened arc across its black,
small circles set in the glowing dust-bridge --
over which whose feet?
The blessed, the dead.

Invisible and unknown they are walking,
having been uprooted by the stars.
Slow growing but growing wild
they cross over, like small clusters
of fragrant flowers between
some April and some June.

Their deaths coincide
with Death itself,
the wide, sea-risen, star-called movement
of all things.

Those white pastures, those far
and blissful regions of the sky,
upward, outward, and this prayer
forever circling where I stand:
that in my time I too will

go.

The Milky Way
Copyright © 2003, Christopher J. Picking