From Ice and Dust

All summer long, a comet
streaks, star blown and cold,
as I walk, hollow boned
thin ribbed, a scarecrow loosed

upon the night, trailing cotton.
How elastic the hands once,
thick with boxwood and petunias,
a plump face blankly ignorant

of kneecaps and hips, their gray,
aching moonscape. In the dark
closeted sky, original dust returns,
its tiny, solid planet flashes

the same blinkered path always,
a brightness not consuming
itself, a body falling, falling
for miles, whole and unbroken.

Sharon Ackerman is a poet residing in Albemarle County, Virginia. She is one of the winners in the 2017 Virginia Poetry Society’s national contest and has been published in Streetlight Magazine.

Featured image: Untitled by Cigumo at flickr. CC license.