Written piece
Universal Sanctuary
Donna Faulkner
New Zealand
About this piece
All of humanity looks to the stars for hope and inspiration. They guide and unify our collective humanity despite our many differences. Under the stars we are both big and small, important and insignificant.
From the sanctuary of my concrete yard
in Reynolds Ave at 4 am.
Stars blink a hello, morse code from my loved dead.
They band together to sketch the birth of myths and gods.
Eyes in the sky above my concrete yard
in Christchurch at 4 am always watching.
I share this moment with a nursing mum in Brighton,
a man whose body has betrayed him in Bangladesh,
a child that makes a wish.
Our daily lives are the full nine yards
comedy and tragedy.
Webbed entanglements
weave together
captured dreams and silent prayers.
Battle cries in every language.
Constellations play the fiddle
and the violin,
take me dancing everywhere.
Archives of continuity
appearing all at once.
My pointed finger traces their thread of origin,
I drift back to my cold backyard,
New Zealand Stars at 4 am.