Stargazer

If I’m not looking at you,
forgive; if I appear
to be scanning the sky,
head thrown back, curious,
ecstatic, shy, strolling
unevenly across the floor
in front of you, my audience,
forgive, and forget what’s
happening in my cells.
It’s you I’m thinking of
and, voice thrown upwards,
to you I’m speaking, you.

I’m trying to keep this simple
in the time left to me:
luckily, it’s a slow
and selective degeneration.
I’m hoping, mainly, to stay present
and straight up despite
the wrong urge that’s taken hold,
to say everything, all
at once, to everyone, which
is what I’d like if only
I could stay beyond this moment.

published in Magma 47 (Summer 2010) edited by Annie Freud

This poem appears in Jo Shapcott’s sixth collection, On Mutability
(Faber 2010).