Too Proud To Love...

Everyone knows that the moon started out

as a renegade fragment of the sun, a solar

flare that fled that hellish furnace

and congealed into a flat frozen pond suspended

between the planets. But did you know

that anger began as music, played

too often and too loudly by drunken performers

at weddings and garden parties? Or that turtles

evolved from knuckles, ice from tears, and darkness

from misunderstanding? As for the dominant

thesis regarding the origin of love, I

abstain from comment, nor will I allow

myself to address the idea that dance

began as a kiss, that happiness was

an accidental import from Spain, that the ancient

game of jump-the-fire gave rise

to politics. But I will confess

that I began as an astronomer—a liking

for bright flashes, vast distances, unreachable things,

a hand stretched always toward the furthest limit—

and that my longing for you has not taken me

very far from that original desire

to inscribe a comet's orbit around the walls

of our city, to gently stroke the surface of the stars.

- Troy Jollimore