Claire Farley
Los Angeles, California, USA

CELESTIAL

‎‎‎for Pat Thompson (1978–2024)

It was a season of abundance and cheap meals. 
A plan to meet in Paris. Stole the gallery’s
last bottle and walked thin streets to the Seine.  
I remember the moon was big and you painted 
yellow & blue ex-voto under invisible stars. 
Leaving on the bus through Brussels, I wrote
a poem about the thin streets, the invisible 
stars. I was thinking about time and distance,
that howling-hole feeling of home so big 
then because it was new, the wider orbit. 
And the years between passed quickly—
rushed coffee walks, pakoras in the mall 
with the indoor fountain, frescoed clouds. 
There is always more to remember, time 
stretching as it does. From Kinngait to 
King Street, how you tethered constellations,
imagined futures of dreamlike solidarity.
How you loosened the ground of your holding 
until it collapsed under your feet, celestial. 

Last night I watched Jupiter & her moons 
in the telescope’s eye. Callisto’s shaking orb 
appeared to me as it was when I set out 
up the hill to the Observatory. Face turned
to the past, light’s backward glance—even stars 
wear out the shine of their longing, fall 
exhausted into unarranged light. But look up. 
Across the speeding universe, blue, yellow, 
blue pools radiant in the never-ending present 
where we meet to toast under old world skies.