by Kerfe Roig
Looking for Shooting Stars: A Golden Shovel
I hear him coughing all night long
A hundred floors above me in the Tower of Song
— “Tower of Song,” Leonard Cohen
Hank Williams knew the silence of a falling star I
have waited twice his lifetime to hear.
When the moon slides behind a cloud, I see him
lying in the backseat of his Caddy coughing
on the way to a show he never played at all.
Soon, clouds obscure the rest of the sky for the night.
Somewhere behind them in those absences marking long
forgotten constellations, I hear him singing acapella
to a star whose brightness still shines a hundred
thousand years after its death and a billion floors
above me, above the moon, above
anyone who ever saw its silent flame
light up a purple sky. As I turn to head back in,
the wind picks up and oak leaves seethe
all around me from unseen branches that tower
like a monstrous chorus over the roof,
drowning out the words of his dying song.
Kip Knott is a writer, teacher, photographer, and part-time art dealer living in Delaware, Ohio. His third full-length book of poetry, The Other Side of Who I Am, is available from Keslsay Books. A new poetry chapbook, Little Hiroshimas, is forthcoming from Finishing Line Press in 2024. You can follow him on Twitter @kip_knott Instagram @kip.knott, and read more of his work at kipknott.com.
An American born in the state of Ohio, Kerfe Roig has resided in New York City since the age of 19. She enjoys transforming words and images into something new. Her poetry and art have been featured online by Silver Birch Press, The song is…, Pure Haiku, Visual Verse, and The Ekphrastic Reviewand published in Ella@100, Incandescent Mind, the Raw Art Review , The Anthropocene Hymnal: Songs of a self-defining era, The Polaris Trilogy, and several natureinspired anthologies. Follow her explorations on her blogs, https://methodtwomadness.wordpress.com/ (which she does with her friend Nina), and https://kblog.blog/, and see more of her work on her website http://kerferoig.com/.