Light Pollution
by Barbara Yauss
Sorry darlin maybe another night
my papa said to me but toward the sky.
His clouded corneas concealed from him
all that he would have pointed to and named:
Ursa Major, The Milky Way, the city lights
muddying our view.
He sees none of this, the world light-less,
the sky: a blackboard, teaming with
erasure—a lesson
he didn’t know he was teaching
on loss, on parallax, on how much
time we don’t have.
A lifetime from now, how little
will be left for us to see?
I know I can’t help but look
at what’s buried instead of what’s left—
the cataracts growing thicker
over our night dome. Human light erasing
away at the edges, pulling heavy at our pupils.
We mean to look
to the stars and feel small, but instead
see the absence on the horizon
and feel smaller.