stardust by ashley frerichs

The family unit once Pangea
now split and fragmented into pieces
separate
but still made of the same stuff.
 
Star matter. All of us matter.
Everything does
as much as it doesn’t.
 
A blade of grass—the first paper cut,
the wise ancient sequoia,
an Osprey and his writhing dinner,
furry tarantula legs, all too-many of them.
 
Shells like ours, only on lease,
slowly rent asunder by the passing of time.
The freight train rumbles on by
etching train tracks onto faces.
 
Constellations are contracts--
sign on the dotted line.
 
Continental breakfast drifting into lunch.
The tectonic integrity of this old house
creaks and sways under interrogation
by the wailing winter wind
 
maintaining the ground its held for decades.
The cosmic scale blinks,
wipes a crumb of sleep from its eye,
and the old house collapses
along with everything else,
 
back into the stars.