Abraham's Sky

from Ain't Milton: a chapbook of poetry

And He took him outside and said, "Now look toward the heavens, and count the stars, if you are able to count them." And He said to him, "So shall your descendantas be." Genesis 15:5

At that moment,
That present moment touching eternity
When the ancient one peered, invited, into the Eastern sky
And viewed through tears his promised progeny
And saw the stars infinitely spread
Like sand of angel's sandals
Across the carpet night,

At that moment
Did one star shine for me?

Was it a fire primeval quenched
Whose light, from creation's infancy had traveled
Through history's depths to greet the father on that night,
A beacon from an empty void?
Cold.
Dead.
Silent.

Or was his eye distracted
By a maverick,
A comet renegade too rebellioius to revel in the sky,
Abandoning the joyous dance of Heaven
To drink the richness of the muddy soil,
Exchanging ecstasy for pain,
All for dramatic brilliance?

Instead I, his spiritual offspring, hope to be
A flicker
So unperceivably small in the silence of space,
Perhaps in the corner far behind Abraham,
Out of his glance,
A pulsing fragile sliver of light,
A fractured piece of celestial diamond
Content to serve its simple purpose
Of lighting a tiny corridor of Night.