Walking the Beach, We Show Our Ignorance
about Stars, Constellations
written by: D. R. James
before mentioning the dead ones
mixed in,
the snuffed ones,
how they’ve guided the race, we figure,
since long before the faintest flicker
of a first-hand myth;
but dead, even then,
and now, this side of infinitude,
this side, let’s say, of
Gilgamesh, how
the discerning words
of the long gone
still illumine our forever
primitive way.
D. R. James, retired from nearly 40 years of teaching college writing, literature, and peace studies, lives with his psychotherapist wife in the woods near Saugatuck, Michigan. His latest of ten collections is Mobius Trip (Dos Madres Press, 2021).
Latest posts by D. R. James (see all)
- Walking the Beach - August 25, 2026
- Great Chain of Being - July 26, 2026
- A Moment Depends Not Just on Its Moment - April 6, 2026
