Hot off the press - Poem: Solar Lights - Okay, okay so I downed popcorn while writing it

SOLAR LIGHTS

The walkway leading

to my front porch has

eight solar lights, unseen

during the day but at night

they guide me on this

snowy eve. I pause in

gratitude, then notice

their shadow of deep

furrows upon the

midnight snow

At first I think they

mirror my furrowed

brow, how can it

be I am no longer young

and the two children I bore

have fled their nest and

don’t need me any more

These faithful lights

never disappoint, just as

the sun, whether flashing

with its explosive

sun spots or appears invisible

behind mighty clouds

may indeed have learned

the sad news: in

millennia to come, light years

away, when we

train our eyes upon the sun

of our childhood and old age,

where Phaeton’s chariot

was shot down by Jupiter’s

thunderbolt to save the earth

from desiccation, this very same

sun where lovers in the summer

once lay under umbrellas on the beach,

hands and hearts entwined,

innocent that light years

away, the beach, the

familiar streets of home,

their infants soon to be born,

would exist no more,

they know not that

Galileo’s sun will cool

unstoppable, colder than

the frozen crusted snow

that flanks my walkway

tonight, its deep furrows

weep the truth:

our golden sun will

suicide and metamorphose

as nothing more than a
tiny chip of moon.