Bioluminescence
from Stay in Motion
 
We are born on a blue blip
encased within insensible night.
In a photograph, space appears
deep ink-black, darker even
than the underside of eyelids.
 
The many lights that dot our globe
give us clarity. This image of us
is a world we’ve come to know –
the mess of the city; its electric apathy,
its lightning hum, its inorganic song.
 
The city shines not for us, but because
of us on the ground, where these lights reign.
But looking up into the night, I see the stars –
tiny fireflies, winking, casting their vitality;
Obliquely, I glimpse myself shining.
 
It’s true that we are made of stardust
only in the way of old things becoming
new, the way the ground sprouts
from the embers of the past –
that past encased in ordinary rock
 
from which we tunneled out.
We inherit what light we make;
We are of that unyielding glare. 
If intention can flow in electrons,
then invention seeds life. The city sings our name.
 
And yet, an interstellar spark
flared up in the dark and split open
ancient sky. It gave us all we are,
casting its vitality. On a clear night,
I peer up at my past, grasping at starlight.