Epiphany grit

M78: Stardust and Starlight, Stephan Messner 

Galaxies swirl

Stardust gathers

Dark matter eludes

     and carolers still sing. 

Star of wonder, star of night

Could our yearning, straining for hope

Lead us to look up and look out for a moment?

Behold. A shooting star passing by, cold crispness of indigo sky

Could this one tiny streak from afar yet massive blaze

Sightings of the shooting star were reported over Ireland April 2009

     rest over one heart, emblazon one mind,   embolden one life? 

Sands of desert wars

Jungle atrocities

Unspeakable inhumanity

Rubble of crushed neighbors

Shrieks of women torn apart

Whimpers of children lost in the night or

Blasted away, blown apart by through the sleek, slim steel barrels of broken boys

     or men of the darkness

Sobs and tears of rainbow parents; red grandmas, orange uncles, violet sisters,

     sapphire brothers, emerald gramps and golden aunties

All seep into one brown mush of muddy sorrow.

Obsidian in the rough

Where is star wonder in the midst of the night?

How will the stardust call human souls

     from the brink of despair?

No eye can see, no ear can hear it – the answer, no mind can conceive

The reply. Only known in the beauty of quartz sugar sand’s

Silica sand

Melt, 4,172° intense fire, a kiln of hope, forged in the furnace of faith, 

     caldron of caritas

Into the clarity of crystal – clear, pure, luminous and lovely.

Here, we cling to the notion that the Holy One of galaxies far flung and all beyond

Fashions splendor out of the feet of sandy clay, broken shards of our own destruction

Piece by piece, sliver by sliver burned into glass

     into which epiphany breaks forth, flickers of light

Glass blower Robert Gary Parkes, Marion McChristall

Shining

Out of the grim

     grime and grit of our sharp, jagged edges

Our fragments

Our torn dreams

The shattered mess

            of us

Out of this muddle does the light still shine,

Still.

Holy.

Wondrous.

In the night.

               In us.

Jayne M. Thompson © 2013 

Persian Ceiling by Dale Chihuly, Seattle, WA, Elaine Thompson AP