Galileo and the Great Night Sky

A man is father to many

In his life

If he is a good man

My father had five children

Two died in infancy

I fathered three children

Out of wedlock

And two were forced into a convent

As there were no other alternatives

For them

I have been dead

For nearly four hundred years

And at the moment of my death

I was placed

On something called the Karman line

Named after Theodore von Karman

Which happens to be an imaginary line

That divides the world as we know it

From outer space

I was in flux

And the result of that
Mixed with my no-longer living form
Was that I had quite a bit of time

To think

Much like being jailed

Or ill at home

I stayed in place

While others lived

Though I could not see them

For the eyesight of a dead man

Is worse than one might think

And I was so far from Earth’s surface

That only great bodies of water

And land masses

Were visible to me

And the stars

I had the stars

One such star revealed itself to me

As one of my lost siblings

And I thought perhaps I was hallucinating

Only to find that many who perish

Are reborn in the cosmos

Not all, of course

Some choose to walk among the living

And some are cast up

With no idea why

But the enjoy it all the same

I began spending my eternity

Questioning the celestial bodies

To see who they had been

When their breath still rose and fell

At regular intervals

You’d be surprised who’s above you

There is no morality to it

No criteria for who gets

To burn bright

Next to the moons of Jupiter

Or who winds up in a creaky old home

Wearing a white sheet

And scaring children

Stars and ghosts

Have much in common

Their only real separation

Being coveted placement

Although I suppose it depends

On what you covet

I wouldn’t mind haunting a house

Or two now that I’ve settled into my demise

Star after star became personal to me

Explorers and scientists

Sadists and puppeteers

Those who died old

And those who only took a few gasps of air

Before they found themselves

Perpetually on fire

And then…not

You die as a human

And then a star

And then you go on

But you do go on

I spent so much time looking for my father

But none of the stars answered to his name

And many suggested that it was likely

He chose to remain down below

Even though I do not remember him

As a man who enjoyed humankind

I wished to tell him of my own children

And ask him things that did not occur to me

In life

When you die, the questions overrun you

And so many of them

Are for those who are no longer there

Then come the apologies you can’t make

The confessions you can’t confess

The realizations that only the hindsight of death

Can bring about

You reach for something

And that’s when you’re pulled up and up

Leaving everything

And forgetting nothing

It’s hard to tell

If where you are

Is because of how well you lived

Or how poorly

Or if the stars are correct

And none of it matters at all

I wanted to tell my father

Who I am

Though it makes no sense

And never will

I wanted to find his place

In the great big sky

And close my eyes

In his light

One last time