Richard Magahiz
Give to All Today
The thing that living beings consume
is the radiation given off by stars.
With nothing in between the God ball
sustains its ten billion dependents.
For stars are profligate and give away
what they cannot forever sustain.
How many civilizations have learned
to sip the reflection of starlight?
Life always finds a way to take what is
in residence and knows to coax
much out of little without needing
to repay the benefactor.
A star’s warmth teaches movement.
And when it is time for the dancer
to lay their perfect body down,
liquid starlight is their due.
_______________
Richard Magahiz tries to live an ordered life in harmony with all things natural and created but one that follows unexpected paths. He’s spent much of his time wrangling computers as a day job but now when he’s not making music he is writing. His work has received nominations for Rhysling, Dwarf Stars, Pushcart, and Best of the Web awards. His chapbook collection The Reducing Flame was published in 2025. His website is at https://zeroatthebone.us/.
Author’s Comments/Backstory: The poem was inspired by an article* in The Marginalian about the late astronomer Rebecca Elson. It links to a video of Elson reading a remarkable poem of her own “Antidotes to Fear of Death” which was my poetic jumping off point as it was for many other artists. It started out as something dictated into my phone in 2024, which I transcribed and broke into lines, then spent a year trimming, rewriting, and setting into quatrains. The dancer image in the final stanza was present from the beginning as was the somewhat “high and mighty” tone.
* https://www.themarginalian.org/2020/04/10/antidotes-to-fear-of-death-rebecca-elson/
Editor’s Notes: Image credit for liquid starlight (by Freepik)