The Caretakers

 The Caretakers

by David Steven Simon

Children are the caretakers

of stars that can’t remember

how or when they fell.

It may have been a Tuesday.

It happened so fast.

One minute they were defying gravity,

basking in the womb of time—

and then,

before they could wail

in unfathomable sorrow,

they

tumbled

and

flailed

and landed on the beach,

like the twisted ragdoll bodies

of Normandy,

until the Caretakers arrived,

carrying them off

in low-swaying buckets

to their work station

beneath a striped umbrella

planted like an astronaut’s flag,

lit by the surgical luminaire

of the soon-to-be-forgotten moon,

where

the Caretakers

began their tireless work

on the resurrection

of the Fallen.

Points were readjusted.

Spines realigned.

Compasses rejiggered—

guaranteeing

no star

would ever wander off alone again.

The work ended

at early bright,

with a final kiss

that triggered a thermonuclear reaction

in even the coldest of heavenly bodies—

which lit the way for

the Caretakers to wade into the water,

in their soon-to-die footprints,

to perform the mystical ceremony

of offering the healed

to the holy alliance of the immeasurable,

so the world can rewaken

and remember

the love

that, until this very moment,

had felt as extinct

and forsaken

as a fallen star.