The Starflower
by Marly Youmans
[Photo: "The Rose Galaxy", NASA, used by permission]

A scene composed of shore and lapping waves,
With hills so very low they seemed to be
Not hills at all but breakers, faraway ...
No. Before that absent-minded scene,
Before there was an impetus to brood —
Into absence that was not yet absence
Because there was no thing to be "not there,"
A word was spoken. Light. Light made the world.
Then brute and violent centuries swept by,
And dust of ancestors was whirled by wind,
Driven from east to west in careless gusts.

A taproot sank into the stretch of sand
That was a sea of infinite small specks
(We knew, because many had tried to count
Until their faces wore the look of "dreams
That failed" — or so we said, not knowing how
To name a thing so torn and shadowy);
A tendril of new green, uncurling, rolled
Aside a particle and sprang toward sun.

We called the plant a stem of bearded grain,
But it grew brighter as the summer flew,
Until it broke the husk and bloomed like stars.
In fall we plucked the stalk to thresh the head,
And found auroral silks around the seed
Were fine and hard to keep as thistledown:
That very night it floated toward the moon.

And when the spark was lost in fields of fire,
Some of us tried to count the numberless,
Forgetting all we knew of dreams that failed,
But stars proved infinite as jots of sand.
At dawn, ours was the last of lights to dim,

Allowing us to glimpse its shining heart
When sky began to pale — because its glow
Seemed to foretell the rising of the sun,
Our children named this light the morning star.

Marly Youmans is the author of seven books: Valorson, a limited edition novella forthcoming in 2008; three novels, her most recent work The Wolf Pit, along with Catherwood, and Little Jordan: A Novel; a collection of poetry, Claire; and two very Southern fantasies, Ingledove set in the Blue Ridge Mountains, and The Curse of the Raven Mocker. She has won The Michael Shaara Award for The Wolf Pit, and two Hoepfner awards for short fiction. A native of the Carolinas, she lives in Cooperstown, New York. For more about her work, please visit her website and blog.