Stars, you are the heavens' flock
tangling your pale wool across the night sky.
Stars, you're bits of oily fleece catching
on barbs of darkness to swirl in black wind.
You appear, disappear by thousands,
scattered wide to graze but never straying.
While I, a mere shepherd of these words, am lost.
What can I do but build a small blaze
and feed it with branches the trees let fall:
that twiggy clatter strewn along the ground.
And lichen crusting such dead limbs glows silver, glows white.
The earthfood for a fire so unlike and like your own.
Oh, what can I do but build a small blaze.