Mountains of dark speckled with the starlight of tiny villages
just trying to keep a foothold on the steep slopes.
If it wasn’t for the howling wind, I’d swear I was floating
through a galaxy with the stars so close I could almost hold them,
make wishes to them and sit there with their soft glow on my face.
I could easily believe that the constellations on the mountainsides
were not just streetlights but the sad glow of forgotten history,
the light taking long enough that they burn in the past,
now gone thanks to time and distance and leaving behind ghosts
that refuse to vacate the place they once considered to be their home.
Maybe an avalanche will happen and these lights will disappear,
and no one but me will ever know they had even been there,
the erasing of an entire galaxy with a single witness who will say nothing,
but will just carry on sliding down his own ***** and forget
all about the little lights that for a moment filled him with wonder.
No marker saying what once was here, no memorial to potential lives lost,
just an echo of the damage done, a gravitational wave with no apparent source,
a destructive blast of gamma rays that seem to materialise from nothing,
no great flash of light that alerts everything within a million light years,
no warning beacon flashing in the dark, telling everyone to take shelter.
There is no avalanche though, and the soft glow of the lights keeps shining,
and I can be thankful that tonight offers no destruction for a change.