Does It Matter?

They had finished their midnight picnic and were lying on a blanket, fingers entwined, in the garden, in the middle of the night. There was only a thin crescent moon, like a brooch on velvet, but stars filled every crease and crevice of the sky, shimmering, twinkling and swarming.

‘It’s hard to imagine that stars are long dead. Only their lights still exist,’ she said, a gentle murmur in his ear.

‘What?’

‘Does it matter that the stars we see are already dead?’ she asked, turning and looking straight into his eyes, where she was surprised to see constellations reflected in his indigo irises.

She turned onto her back, staring up at the cosmos again, although she preferred looking into his eyes. Just then, a star shot through the sky in an arc.

‘Who cares if it’s dead,’ he said. ‘Let’s make a wish.’

Kim M. Russell, 8th April 2024

Image by Daniel Mayo on Unsplash

It’s Prosery Monday at the dVerse Poets Pub and our host is Dora; she has introduced a new poet to me, Amy Woolard, whose poetry she recently encountered in The New Yorker.

She has given us some background information on Woolard who, as well as being a poet, is a legal aid attorney and works on civil rights policy and legislation in Charlottesville, Viriginia.

The lines Dora has chosen are from Woolard’s poem, ‘Laura Palmer Graduates’:

“What does it matter
That the stars we see are already dead.”

I didn’t mean to, but I found myself writing something romantic.

53 thoughts on “Does It Matter?”

  1. Beautifully romantic, Kim. Loved every detail but this line stole the show for me: “There was only a thin crescent moon, like a brooch on velvet, but stars filled every crease and crevice of the sky, shimmering, twinkling and swarming.” Perfect.

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      1. It was a pleasure to read! I must apologize if you have tried to access my site and been directed to an extinct web address. I believe I’ve solved that problem now, with the help of a kind fellow poet. 🙂

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      5. I hear you! Best of luck with hosting! I’m so technologically illiterate that dVerse intimidates me! 😬

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  7. “There was only a thin crescent moon, like a brooch on velvet,” oooh the image this creates, Kim. Beautiful!

    I love your romantic tale here….you and I both went for the positive 🙂

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  8. A lovely moment you describe here, Kim. This whole sentence really does it for me especially:

    “There was only a thin crescent moon, like a brooch on velvet, but stars filled every crease and crevice of the sky, shimmering, twinkling and swarming.”

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  12. The innocence of, young lovers, thinking what they shared is, eternal like the, stars in the, skies, but, unfortunately, one or both, will, eventually, wake up in the, reality of, things…but, let’s not, disturb them, and, just, let them, stay in, each other’s, arms, a little, longer…

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    2. p.s. Our daughter is in London for three weeks, working. She is with BP. One weekend she plans to run to the Continent, to see a Swiss friend.

      ..

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