2023 Commended - Elizabeth Grace Strassheim, 'Waning'

ELIZABETH GRACE STRASSHEIM

Commended - 2023 Tower Poetry Competition, 'The Planets'

Waning

We lived in the city for a while so we could not see them

and when we moved to the countryside this didn’t change.

Christmas lights dropped on a carpet

marbles across the floor

the poster on the classroom wall: your family portrait.

We picked our favourites and cut tissue paper circles

            Earth, because I am here

            Venus, because she is pretty

            Jupiter, because it’s the big one.

So we have magnets on the fridge and stars on the television

the light holepunched into the sky waning outside

and people shouting across the kitchen table

            a young astronomer is in the house

who can tell you the names of the bodies

named after Gods

            but a brother cuts in with

a comment about satellites

            and another cuts in with

something about how what can’t be touched doesn’t matter in our world.

And glass beads orbit across the room

as a child hurls them at her friends

after the teacher had lifted the lid from the jar

she scattered the planets across the floor

and announced to them all,

            this is your universe.