“Starlight star bright
First star I see tonight
I wish I may I wish I might
Have this wish I wish tonight…”

~

Starlight on the open road.

The sun has put out her flames of golden fire on the leaves of poplar trees
And she lies to rest behind them
And the darkness tucks her in tonight as her eyelids flutter
The lashes sweep the stars like a broom sweeps dusty memories of the past under a Persian rug
And her brow bone mountains crease to form the shadows
That form the valleys, and her lips form the mountain ridges
And we drive in marveled wonder at the swell of her body’s beauty, asleep on horizon sheets

Her tears have formed these slick roads and they bleed a gasoline that has tarred up her veins
But her grass lungs still inhale the blue sky like a rolling wave consumes the sand

And these hills carry us further than our born-into boundaries had originally confined us
And we open up like the road before us
And we open up, vulnerable

The way cows graze pastures, unaware of cars filled with the gaping stares of desensitized humans
Emptied of anything that could cause them awe in a world where so much can leave us speechless

Why have I never stopped to notice how pure the color green is?

And if there are aliens looking down through space and timelessness
Looking down at us
From saucers made of foiled tin
I hope they see such beauty in this planet we’ve sought life in
I hope they are as inspired by the mountains and the plains
The open roadways
The rivers and the streams
The oceans of salt and forests of dirt
The warmth of the sun and the wind that caresses while it flirts
How snow comforts with delicious sought-after stillness
I hope they are as inspired by nature and all her just belongings
As to notice what we’ve created in her glory
The gorgeous worlds waiting to be explored in the enveloping 3-D scenes of movies
And the genius of written books, the words—spells cast to trap you between the covers of that world’s bindings

I hope they see what we’ve created
And not how much we have destroyed.
~

Author: Alise Versella
Image: Fletcher Clay/Unsplash 
Editor: Catherine Monkman