Your Hands are Stars

‘In a sense, human flesh is made of stardust.’ Nigel Calder, the Key to the Universe, BBC, 1977

Your Hands are Stars

Your hands are stars -
bright space molecules

fallen through this Universe
for black billenia. In darkness,

see they shine - learned dust-flesh;
spun white skeleton, light calcified.

Trees are alight with damp green stars,
leaf bones fragile as a mouse’s hand -

are sucking rain, sun,
from Earth’s wet halo.

When you touch me at night -
two silver prints like starfish.