A Little Bright Star Poem by JAMES T. ADAIR

Tomorrow's shirt is spinning in the washer
2 AM and eyes are sleepy and gritty
Walking bare-chested through the house
No aires to keep up tonight
I turn off the back porch lights
step into the cooler night air outside
The air feels cool agains my chest
like eating a peppermint lifesaver and breathing in
only it is my skin that feels this refreshment in the night air
I sit down so low on a folding Adirondack chair
I feel the cold aluminum against my upper arms
sending a chill down my back but I ease down again
The air and the porch seem still damp
from watering flowers earlier with a garden hose
and the night sky is a canopy of small twinkling stars
Life feels so weary but somehow this moment seems peaceful
I think of a poem someone wrote for me, surprised me
It seemed speak kindly but to also foretell an end
I wonder why, and what the words mean
It's a fragile friendship...a sweet one
But why does she speak of smiles not lasting
Perhaps she's right, but I stlill feel her happy spirit
Or I should say a spirit trying to convince herself of happy
Maybe it is that very thing I feel in her....her struggle
She's got a better idea than me and I wish I could be more like her
But inside I know its not in me
Sadness still has a strangle hold on me and I've stopped fighting
but tonight I'm glad to be her friend even if she's sure it will end
As I look at the twinkling stars
I try to pick her out among them and wonder