STAR LANGUAGE Where are the stars, do you see them? Walking out of the sky on their long stilts. Each star wants to be its own sound, but it's crowded, too noisy up there. They fall down, they tinkle, they speak. Each star tells you its story, invites you over for the evening. One star, two stars, three stars. The spaces between them is the story, those black parts. You make the words, you string those stars together, you can ride like on a swinging bracelet. The spaces between them are imaginary. The stars got together with all their jewels in the sky. so many jewels, each star holding out its own hand, holding out its own star like a lantern. The desert such a dark place, the stars snuck down with their words into those dark places, snuck inside those cricket bodies like a laugh. Got your ears to make that sound with? They went into the black body of the earth and thought the crickets' thoughts. It's hard to be a night in the desert without the crickets. They went into those crickets' throats. You make it with stars you make it with the skin of the desert night. You stitch those two together, sky and earth. You find it with your cricket voice. * by Norbert Ruebsaat