Even Astronauts Can't Touch The Stars

She was huddled in my doorway
A necklace hung around her
Spelling out a name
Apus, decked in a gipsy skirt
And a glittering white blouse
Knees bent close to the tip of her nose
Her breathing disrupted by weeping
“Girl, why do you cry
Appeared, just if you have washed up from the shore?”
With a salesman sparkle in her eye
She replies

“I have fallen from afar,
Man, I can only try
To tell you where I have been and what I have seen”

I was welcomed inside
Away from the harrowing wind and rain
cuddled up inside this gentleman’s home
With tartan blankets across my slender frame

Damsel, now with rose tinted cheeks
Cradling her mug of warm cooco
Hints I will need to concentrate
With my best priest pose
I listen to her story in confidence
She curses
Which I didn’t oppose

“I wanted something to keep
This caused my downfall
Into Neptune’s abyss…"

“…Tiptoed on the edge
At the end of the cosmos

A beautiful desolate space
My kind of quiet bliss
Then the blackbird in me spied
The Bow of Orion
A glittering sapling of power

She begins to crow

“I wanted to touch, take in my hands,
Stretching, reaching, alas it was too distant
And I fell from my perch”

I shoulder her tears
“Apus”, I murmur to her ear
“Don’t grieve
Be proud you found your way around
The many constellations,
That history has taught
Has caused sailors to run aground

A small fraternity
Has set foot of this world
Hoping they can, hoped they would
I have even dreamt that maybe I will
Oh darling...”

I repeat the words
A noble man, maybe a prophet
Spoken with a graceful kindness
I would never forget them
On the day I was thrown into the oceans
He said
“Oh darling...
Even Astronauts can’t touch the stars”