in memory of Lawrence Priest




          I.
Lolo with his diamond-tipped

drill, shooting sparks.
A telescope large as my body

waits in silence.
In space diamonds are common

as sand, interstellar pressure
of fusion inside stars. On earth

there is just this carbon-bound life,
the body another kind of erosion,

tied to time. Bring my eye
to the glass – in this spectacle

of mirrors a planet gazes back,
one eye fixed on me. Who’s to say

there is no one else out there?




          II.
In 1977 the Voyager II spacecraft

begun its journey out to space,
never to return to earth. A grain

of sand floating amongst stars,
it bears a record carved in copper,

plated gold – evidence of life
in music, humankind’s first and last

language. Is the vacuum of space
a silent place? Lolo would know

the answer, could drill it from
the earth, pluck it like stardust

out of air. What Voyager II asks for
is remembrance, is witness. If it

were to look back, what would it see?




          III.
Now the song I move towards is

unspeakable, eternal as a diamond.
I take its pointed tip and drill,

carve the notes into everything
a song for the stars that is as old

as time, old as the blood-iron
fused inside stars. Somewhere,

lightyears away, time moves slowly
through the space warped by

grief. The space both past and future,
but never present. The space map

and history. In that space, I exist.
In that space, I am gazing through

a telescope back in time, and singing.