From above the earth, man's silver bird looked down
And saw blazing destruction on the ground.
It seemed stars had fallen from the sky
To form a rim around the world.
Like a halo of fire glow,
They ran in streams together
Uniting molecules of liquid light
Scintillating essence of sparkle
Dazzling the velvet dark.

Myriads of neon jewels glistened in clusters,
Like diamond flowers adorning the breast of Earth
They etched with caress of seeming flame
Contours of valley's curves -
Mountains' voluptuous swells
Heaving with earthly breathing
On course through orbital zones
Within zones through universal cells
In choreographer jubilee of sparkle
Earth flaunted her jewel-fires' evanescence vanishing
In the clear, cold sea of night,
Shrouded in surrounding impenetrable black
Deep as death and soft as love.

Those glittering gems were man's fallen stars
Ubiquitous projects of his need
Augmented by extravagant desire.
His dubious success against the faintness
Of heaven's fires,
Scant nightlights in his own
Gravity bound threatening blank void
While he burned the progeny of the sun.

Betwixt earth and sky
The silver harbinger hums
Looking up to Saturn and down
To Birmingham's Vulcan
With numb and dumb surmise;
"Now is all there is."

Man's incandescent and neon, and florescent luminescence
Rival interns of convenience, even surpass
In close proximity
Light of long gone light years passed
But are false promise of postmortem stars and planets
Hung in space by cosmic chain
Eon's of diminishing dim
Hung one on one forever.

Heavens' stars and moons and suns look down
Dismayed by man's precocity
They are themselves mirrored
In quiet pools, coming in by nascent streams and placid lakes
With classic sublimity
Natures innocent, awesome simplicity.

Though shy, above man's multi hued
Beacons blazing
Yet, will they glow
And when earth's fires slow down
And one by two by all go out
Yet will they gleam in the clean
Arresting quiet of moon - tempered
Star spangled dark.
And the earth orbiting in pale silver silhouette
In the light - balm dark -
Once glutted with glow, burned out,
With internal combustion,
Consumed by man's now adulation
And ravenous population
Will what?
Reflect - Only reflect.

Dated 1977