Late Fall Sky

By: Randy Bynum

I look up at the Pleiades,

brain-flamed, gob-smacked

and sobbing, galaxy fusion

twinkle all loose gravity

hung in the sky for my tiny

bandwidth ears and eyes.

What are their favorite

songs? Please Sisters,

may we listen along?

But they won’t pay our bills,

buy food or a roof or cure

a thousand ills nor rid us of

a turgid foul despot, his

toxic vampire swills. Still,

a meteor flashes by, then

another, chasing the past,

saying beauty, mystery,

beauty, at last: tonight

even we may die as we

sweetly burn and fly.

Morning arrives, fire-

pink cloudy newborn;

we have spun around.

---

Randy Bynum’s work appears in The Good Life Review (2024 Honeybee Prize Winner for Poetry), Cirque (2023 contest winner), Arboreal Literary Magazine, Metonym Journal, Atticus Review, New Plains Review, Cathexis Northwest Press, Santa Clara Review, Clackamas Literary Review, Cutthroat, The Timberline Review, Bainbridge Island Press, Moonstone Arts Center Press, Thin Air Magazine, others. His mother, ½ Native American/Cherokee who hid it until late in life, inspired him. Collections being sent out include On Top of Everything Else, There’s This and four-volume magical realism set, Dragons Who Type: Poems of Whimsy and Wishes. He’s an award-winning playwright, (“The Convert”, Kennedy Center/ACTF, Region IX), in Oregon with soulmate Dani and rescue dog Coop. Like Raymond Carver, he also loves pie.