Using form: iambic trimeter: Janet Kenny, ‘Stars’
Look at the stars, she said.
Just look how cold and bright!
And most of them are dead
though brightening the night.
Time lives and dies like stars.
The past is death of now.
Impermanence that scars
our fleeting human hour.
The world inside a mind
that dies when we die too
leaves others left behind
resigned without a clue.
Forget me nots deceive
and daisy chains depend
on children who believe
our world will never end.
*****
Janet Kenny writes: “The poet is very old and has been confronted inescapably with the mortality of all things.”
Janet Kenny left New Zealand to pursue a career as an operatic and concert singer in London, then settled in Sydney, Australia, where she worked in the anti-nuclear movement and jointly compiled, wrote and edited a book about the nuclear industry, Beyond Chernobyl, published by Envirobook in 1993. Janet lived for many years in Sydney with her husband and visiting currawongs. She now lives in Hervey Bay, Queensland, with visiting butcher birds, spangled drongos, ospreys, pelicans, assorted honeyeaters and flying foxes.
Her poems have been published in printed and online journals, including Avatar, The Chimaera, Folly, 14 by 14, Iambs & Trochees, The Literary Review, Mi Poesias, The Guardian, The Spectator, The New Formalist, The Barefoot Muse, The Raintown Review, The Shit Creek Review, Snakeskin, Lavender Review, Soundz ine, Victorian Violet Press, The Susquehanna Quarterly and Umbrella. Her work is in the collections The Book of Hope and Filled With Breath: 30 sonnets by 30 poets and in the Outer Space anthology, Cambridge University Press. She shared an anthology of bird poems, Passing Through, with Jerry H. Jenkins. She has received three Pushcart nominations.
A selection of her poems, and links to her poetry collections Whistling in the Dark (2016, Kelsay Books) and This Way to the Exit (White Violet Press), are on her website https://janetkenny.netpublish.net/index.htm
Photo: “Sizzling Remains of a Dead Star” by Euclid vanderKroew is licensed under CC BY-NC-SA 2.0.
