TENDER IS NOT THE NIGHT

Tender is not the night. Indifferent rather.
What right have the stars to signify and make decree?
Never, not once, has a star warmed my face,
Lit my path or resolved my plight, my plea.
Not once has a star led seed to birth, to light,
Whenever did strife, did life, cause a star to weep?
Did ever my joy find and keep a sibling twinkle?
Don’t look for my soul on the unprimed canvas of night.
Cold and predictable, distant, elsewhere, other.
Autistic, insentient. No message, no portent, no meaning.
Overrated by poets and children and pedlars of dreams,
To them we are nothing, dust for an instant then gone.
Leave the stars to the night, turn your back on the sky.

With or without them we’re born, we live and we die