Jeff Hardin

Though the Heavens are Filled with Stars

The poem could be looking for anything and still find
nothingness. Not a continent within any ocean. Not
a constellation, though the heavens are filled with stars.
Footage shows crowds scavenging rubble, calling out
names of loved ones, wailing at the destruction. Was
this one natural or man-made? Earthquake? A violation
of a cease-fire? The inevitable consequence of population
density? The poem wants to magnify some dimensions
of existence while downplaying others. Shouldn’t it
redefine what superpower means or, at the least, who
or what qualifies? Here, the poem says, this widow
is a superpower. Pulling down a magnolia bloom is
a superpower. Who listens to poems anyway? This one
prefers staring at a pond slowly going dry or grooving
to Sturgill reminding us to brace for impact. How long
have we been falling toward the great unknown in the sky?
Residents in a war zone learn to avoid snipers. What-is
learns to layer itself, evolve, concede, accept, do without.
Belief is the sum of all our failed negotiations with doubt.

Jeff Hardin is the author of seven collections of poetry, most recently Watermark, A Clearing Space in the Middle of Being, and No Other Kind of World. His work has been honored with the Nicholas Roerich Prize, the Donald Justice Prize, and the X. J. Kennedy Prize. Recent and forthcoming poems appear in The Southern Review, Bennington Review, Image, The Laurel Review, The Louisville Review, Poetry South, Literary Matters, Southern Poetry Review, Potomac Review, Zone 3, Cutleaf, and others. He lives and teaches in TN.