“Stars”

With a cream-colored ceiling above me
At a distance that everything’s blurry
And a few rays of light from the window
And the red glowing time from the clock face,
Small wonder that above me I see stars
Within the ever-cloudy ceiling-sky
As I, eyes open, wait for sleep to come.

I wrote most of this sometime a few years ago, when the image came to me as I was trying to get to sleep. At that point I ran out of words in the middle of a sentence, so it sat unfinished until quite recently, when I brought it to its conclusion. I suspect I had read something recently that suggested this word-picture at the time I wrote it, but by this point I can’t remember. The image I’ve used to illustrate this post is a NASA image of the Pleiades that I found on Wikipedia. (Edit to add: This poem is also included in my book.)

I always welcome your comments, questions, or other feedback about this or any other part of my work. If you’d like to read more of my poetry, you can browse my archive, much of it also broken down into more-manageable groups. You may also share this poem with others, subject to my sharing policy.