a rope to the sky

There is a song number from Carly Simon. It says, There are so many stars. (What if I didn’t love you.) I do sometimes wonder, as I did tonight, if we are looking at the same sky, if we wish for the same things, if we have the same prayers. Maybe not. Maybe no two people have the same wishes the same prayer, or God wouldn’t be listening to every prayer. Dih He, ever?

A wish is a rope to the sky. Did you write that? I sometimes think I have no original thought of my own, no original sins of my own. Always, I must have read it somewhere. So when I say star or sky or wish or breath, they are not really mine, they cannot be mine, no longer mine; surely they belong to another poet somewhere sometime ago. They belong to you long ago, long before I knew you to be quoting you, before I had reason to speak to you, as I do now.

So if I say now that a wish is a rope to the sky to hang one’s breath with, they no longer have the hold, the truth, the power of words spoken for the first time; they no longer have the heart of a love hurting the first time.