Poem: Counting Stars

Poem: Counting Stars

When does discovery end? How do you know when you have learned enough or all things? I think ‘discovering’ is a present art; could we not practice it endlessly, traversing ever deeper and higher and wider? When can you say you are known or know another enough? We are ever-changing, ever-expanding and always being re-shaped by our being known and knowing another.

 

19th

this then, is how it can be

in the midst of a storm on the sixth day

of the seventh week but only the 19th hour

now making a star map from definitions

 

this then, is how it can be to know

but not make knowing a cage

instead just knowing, a long intention

and a longing for safe and true and kind

but knowing is measured so differently

 

this then, is how it can be to halt abruptly at the pass

the knowing and unknowing

one counts in minutes and hours and questions and answers and singular actions

and the other measures the expanse of singularity

like the universe, one ever expanding idea of another

a deep, blue diamond erupting from an earth stone

a long unceasing listen and look

 

this then, is how to see one thing as another

by definition of all things and nothing

a half of a half and a whole and an inversion

an upside-down moon, to see a star and not a starry sky

 

this then, is to kiss your counting – minutes, hours, touches, questions

with a soft, warm, expanding idea to hold them all

your knowing which is one thousand cuts in a stone chiseling me out

and my knowing one gleaming stone that holds the deep ocean and expanding sky

 

this then, is how it can be

to learn to count stars and the passing of time

in hours, words, questions and answers and

the size of an idea by the weight of warm navigation

from 19 to 20.