What I'm telling you [excerpt]
Reincarnation, life everlasting-- call it whatever you will-- it will not change the facts: we are ashes of stellar death. And, in the end, wishing on shooting stars is like pinning your hopes on the last sound of the whistle trailing off, last chord of the train sparking on the tracks then fading into the dark.
Credit
From Song of Thieves by Shara McCallum. Copyright © 2003 by Shara McCallum. Reprinted by permission of University of Pittsburgh Press. All rights reserved.
Author
Shara McCallum
Shara McCallum's most recent poetry collection, Madwoman (Alice James Books, 2017), won the 2018 OCM Bocas Prize for Caribbean Literature in poetry.
Date Published: 2003-01-01
Source URL: https://poets.org/poem/what-im-telling-you-excerpt