KJ Hannah Greenburg
“Star Child”
Response
Star Child
By Jewel Beth Davis
Inspiration piece
One night,
Late at night,
In the blackest velvet of the dark,
I was in a field. Alone.
Walking. Just walking.
The field turned into a wooded maze.
I could not see my feet or the path.
I could barely hear my footfalls.
There were no shadows. Just different shades of black.
There was no owl or cricket to sing my way along.
Then, far ahead of me,
I heard a noise. I leaned to hear.
What it was, I could not make out.
I hastened through trees and bushes in the direction of the sound
And came to the edge of a clearing.
There,
In the bright shining moonlight,
A little girl knelt by a pond.
Her hair flowed in dark torrents of cascading waves.
She was dressed in diaphanous white robes that, to my eyes,
shimmered and changed shape.
She looked as though a lighted candle glowed from within her.
She did not look up at my approach.
If she noticed me, she never let on.
But I was silent. Silent as the wind in the trees.
She picked a wild daisy that grew by the pond.
Just one of many daisies.
I could not tell why that one.
Slowly and carefully, she plucked each petal of the daisy
And placed it in the water.
Then,
When all the petals were floating in the pond,
She gently, carefully,
Lifted each petal from the water.
One by one,
She pasted them on the trunk of a Tamarack tree
Covered with thick green moss
That stood beside the pond.
She arranged them
In much the same way
They had been on the flower.
Then she moved to stand some distance from the tree.
Facing it, she lifted one translucent arm toward it,
And focused intensely on the petals,
Or so I thought.
She was immobile for a timeless moment.
I thought time had slowed and stopped.
My breath and heart ceased it seemed.
But that could not be.
And then, she lowered her arm,
Walked to the tree,
And removed a glowing star
Where the petals once had been.
Gold and silver sprays of light shot from the star points.
She held it by the points between two fingers,
Passing it from hand to hand,
Turning it over and over, as if examining her work.
I wondered if it might pierce her tender skin.
Thus satisfied,
She dipped it once in the pond
And tossed it lightly into the air
Where it stuck against the sky.
I promise you it did.
As if this were not enough,
I saw a falling star whizzing towards the earth.
Soon it landed gently in the star child’s hand.
She knelt down and planted it where the daisy had been.
Then, she went away.
I did not follow her.
Instead I went to look.
I sat, sliding down against the soft green moss of the tree,
As the first pinks, reds and purples of the sunrise
Replaced the velvet blackness.
There, in the rich pond-side earth,
Against the watercolor sky,
A green shoot was already pushing up.
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