New Light's Birth

A sprinkling in the sky

Of rainbow-tinted clouds

Evaporates, like days gone by,

Behind time’s ever-growing shrouds,

And then the stars come out.

They were there the whole day long

But obscured by sun and clouds, and doubt

Of their sustained existence, wrong

Though it may truly be,

Can simmer in one’s head

When all the sky’s a pale blue sea

Where wispy white-faced islands tread.

But now the endless blackness rises,

Revealing untold depths of space

And time, for when one recognizes

A twinkling star’s familiar face,

Its light, now shining on the earth,

Has traveled long to reach this place.

Tonight, I witness new light’s birth –

A star, where none had been before.

But in truth, this vision offers grace

For sight to see the past, and more:

One’s inner light may cross the years

To leave a mortal lifetime’s trace

Upon unknown frontiers.

This poem plays around a bit with the idea that we're kind of seeing the past when we look at the night sky, because it takes a long time for the light from the stars to reach the Earth. And it begins to ask what our own lives will show to the universe, as our light radiates outward from the Earth.