look up, just once

Remember the time
When we could count them,
Connect the twinkles
In the sky,
Sitting pretty
Against the cloudless
Backdrop of the night?

We search now
And then,
Among the hazy smears
That we have scorched
Into the skies.
The murky canvas that proclaims
Our progress
Has but blinded us all.

A few years hence,
They will all be gone,
Most of them, unnoticed
For we would have been
Too wrapped in our world,
And warped in our worries
To look up at them.
To look up to them.


So we’ll paint constellations
On our indoor ceilings,
Lest we forget they existed at all.

But before they disappear
From our eyes,
Just look up once, every night,
Because once they are gone,
How will we teach our
Future to
Reach for the stars
At all?



September 2011 - after i tried in vain to show the kids some constellations up in the sky and was shocked at finding just some hazy speckles