The Birth of a Dancing Star

In the heart of a star, there dances a new form of life.
A newborn son bathes in the light and the warmth of his mother.

“Be still, my child.”

“But mother,” cries the new form of life, “there is so much world to see!
There is so much life to live! How can there ever be time?”

“Time is happening all around us. There will always be time.”
Every instant, there are bubbles of hydrogen bursting.
There is radiation escaping,
There is energy longing to be free.

“When can I leave here, mother?” asks the heart of the star.
“I can see planets outside—and further still, so many stars.
Why are there so many stars, mother?”

“Those are other mothers,” says the sun to her boy,
“Telling their sons to rest patient in the night.”

“But when? But when?”

“Soon enough, my child,” breathes the mother of starlight.
“Soon enough, you will wish you had been.”

New elements develop inside the star.
The star’s firstborn has brothers and sisters who ignore him.
They whisper in the blinding light.
So many whispers.
What are you all whispering about?
Observers near the fourth planet have a hard time quantifying,
qualifying or even amending it.

Who is the greater fool?
Too many children the mother just cannot contain.
The observers have not seen before such structured madness,
will not take it in,
cannot quantify it.
No accounting.

“Mother,” asks the dutiful son, “If you die,
what is to become of us?”

“You will live,” says the mother. “You will have
what you always begged me for.”

There is no space for tears in the heart of a dying star.
There is too much temperature.
Too much temperament.
It turns to steam.
It quickens the reactions, helps push the cascade.

The observers are out of the way when the blow hits.
They ask the star’s son what he thinks and feels.

“I wanted to see the world,” he says.
“And now the world is here for me,
I wish I’d been more patient.”