Paling Stars

Memory is a firmament

Where paling stars digress

To light the olden pathways

Of pain and happiness.

One star is a destiny

I dreamed would be,

Not reckoning the tumult

Of my charted sea.

Another is an echo of

An old and droning hymn

That once had seemed a choir

Of majestic seraphim.

The light of one falls tremulous

Upon a storied place,

A fair and distant rendezvous

Time never can efface.

(First published in Along the Lane: Dedicated to the memory of Thomas William Larsen, who lost his life in World War II)