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We are Stardust by Douglas Bruton
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It’s a line from a song she used to sing, mam’s voice all high and dream-like. She danced, too, swayed from side to side, arms level with her shoulders, spread wide like wings, and her eyes closed as though she was asleep, closed as they are in death. ‘We are stardust’ is what she sang and we joined in, my brother and me, without really knowing what it all meant. Later, I remember lying stretched out on the night-blue grass, the silvered air chill and the sky so clear it was a wonder. And I remember our dad laid beside us, looking up and asking if we could see her, shining brighter than all the rest. ‘Do you see, do you see?’ He said she was looking down on us just as we were looking up at her, and we all stretched our arms heavenwards making believe we were reaching for the stars, reaching for our mam. Then the years lifted me taller than our dad, taller than Tom, and it got so as I hardly ever looked up, not to the sky and the pinprick stars. It was silly, I thought. Something for children to play at, and our dad only doing the best that he could to hold it all together, to hold us together. Once, I recall, her song was playing on the radio and he turned the music up and for some minutes all our thoughts turned on a stardust woman in loose clothes swaying from side to side, turning in widening barefoot-circles. But there’s a funny thing, you know. I was reading this magazine the other day, something Tom had brought home, I think. It was all about science and the big questions. There was stuff about the expansion of the universe and how it was inexplicably speeding up and how this observed fact would require a complete shake up in our understanding of physics. And there was something about multiverses, that we were probably not the only universe there was. And there was something about stardust, and that caught my eye and held me fixed. It said we are stardust and it went on to explain how that was. It was obvious really, when you thought about it, our coming from the same source, hydrogen and helium, at the very start of all things, everything coming from the one beginning. And when I read that I dragged Tom and our old dad out to the dark of the garden and we lay down on the grass, like before, and we tried to get back what we’d had as boys. ‘Do you see, our dad?’ I said. He laughed, and turning to him I could see drip-glass tears on his face and falling into the blue grass. ‘Do you see?’ I said again. ‘Brighter than all the rest, my boy,’ he said, and we laughed, Tom and me and our dad, and we put our arms in the air and reached again for the stars.
Winning Entry: Runnin’ the River Second Place: How the Garden Grows |
