Stargazing

A normal star forms from a clump of dust and gas in a stellar nursery.
—NASA

I can’t stop thinking
about dust motes, how,
waking from a nap,
I watched them, a galaxy
of golden stars drifting
across the late afternoon
of my living room. That night
my mother-in-law texted:
Prognosis very bad.
The PET scan overlaid
with the CT scan, lit up
its own molecular cloud galaxy
of red giants, white dwarfs,
neutron stars: a universe expanding
through the lungs and lymph
nodes of her eldest daughter.
At any time, the air can be laden
with dust motes and pollen,
microbial yeast, mold spores,
and, yes, even star dust
so tiny they’re impossible
to spot with the naked eye.

*

Jill McCabe Johnson is the author of three full-length poetry collections, including Tangled in Vow & Beseech (MoonPath Press), finalist in the Sally Albiso and Wheelbarrow Books Poetry Prizes, plus two chapbooks, and editor of three anthologies. Recent poetry, essays, and short fiction have appeared in Slate, Diode, Waxwing, The Brooklyn Review, and Fourth Genre. Jill is editor-in-chief of Wandering Aengus Press.