If you want my advice,
never to touch the sun.
It’s hot, a big ball of gas
exploding to its surface over and over.
It’s too simple to say that if you touch
the sun you will burn yourself.
Rather, if you touch the sun,
it will burn you, all of you,
irradiate you, in an instant.
People tell children not to play
with fire, but we tell them over
and over, “reach for the stars.”
Stars are suns, a billion billion
burning balls of gas, first
(and hottest) fires in the universe.
What happens when we reach
the stars, get close enough
for the heat to singe our eyebrows,
where the air cooks our nose hair?
There’s simply nothing to do there.
We have fuel enough to burn,
from inside our heads and hearts,
our own fires explode, refine the surface rust,
a power all our own, kindled with stardust.
never to touch the sun.
It’s hot, a big ball of gas
exploding to its surface over and over.
It’s too simple to say that if you touch
the sun you will burn yourself.
Rather, if you touch the sun,
it will burn you, all of you,
irradiate you, in an instant.
People tell children not to play
with fire, but we tell them over
and over, “reach for the stars.”
Stars are suns, a billion billion
burning balls of gas, first
(and hottest) fires in the universe.
What happens when we reach
the stars, get close enough
for the heat to singe our eyebrows,
where the air cooks our nose hair?
There’s simply nothing to do there.
We have fuel enough to burn,
from inside our heads and hearts,
our own fires explode, refine the surface rust,
a power all our own, kindled with stardust.
William John Silverman, Jr. is a published poet and Associate Professor of English at SUNY-Suffolk, where he teaches writing and literature. He lives on Long Island with his wife and their three boys.
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