The Mortality of Stars
by LaDonna Witmer
•••
Somewhere up there
ten millennia ago
a being of light
ended.
Was there sorrow
in its supernova?
Did it mourn
as it collapsed
upon itself
in the cold?
Or did it know
its dying heart
would live remade
within our waking bones.
Born again in the thunder
of earthbound waves
in the fuzz of bees
in the cleft of hooves
and the exhalations of trees.
Stardust, in the quickening
of my girl’s little light.
Here, too, in the
stuttering neurons
of my mother’s tired brain.
