Poetry

BETELGEUSE

 

They say it’ll perish soon—

a nuclear snowball big enough

to swallow Jupiter’s orbit—

but there are so many

light-birthdays separating us,

maybe it already happened

in 1380, around the time Winchelsea 

got raided by hungry Frenchmen 

for the second time. And if

you’d been there, swords

and smoke and sacks of coins

whirling through the muck,

loved ones draining like cups

tipped over on the drying rack,

maybe you’d find it easier

to believe in the kind of cosmos

that trembles when we suffer,

white-hot fingers reaching out

as fast as they’ll stretch.

—Michael Meyerhofer