for Amy Winehouse

The forever young are held in a pair of parentheses
made out of 27 years;
the ageless are collected within the arms of Saturn,
exhaling breath at his baleful return.

Each of you has a life cycle,
you all follow the same path from birth to death.
You first enter as a little bright light, a tiny pinpoint of sparkle;
you part the curtain, hiding as white dwarfs behind this
ringed gas giant, fearful of his mythical jaws.

Next, out of his orbit, you swallow inspiration and stardust
like gunpowder;
you choke down fire comets into your gut
until you can feel your belly bulge, poised to burn.
Bust open bottles and pour your chemical libations out;
crack open sorrow, soak your ribcage, and then ignite.

Then, you become a supernova made out of flesh,
a star’s evolution, from birth to explosion, incarnate
in blood and bone. You shine fabulous tomes
of love and loss, tales of color and void;
you burn rhymes of yawping elation and keening despair
into the night skies of our retinas
before you suddenly succumb into midnight.

And now, Amy, here is your midnight,
your ending of a coffin draped in spent stardust;
your nebula remains up in our skies, captured by paparazzi telescopes
while your fragile, ejected iron core waits for its rest,
its ashes aloft upon the silent Earth. Saturn has returned,
leaving his coins over your eyes;
the Titan paid your fare across Charon’s river.

And when you woke up on the other bank, I hope that
Cobain held open the door;
I hope that Morrison shook your hand and told you
where you had landed.
Joplin and you, I’m sure, could engage in some
hard luck blues woman talk laden with empty bottles of Jack;
you and Hendrix could compare notes about trying
to find the source of soul.
If you see Jones, Johnson, and Basquiat, maybe they’ll ask you
how your ride felt from protostar to explosion;
maybe they’ll ask you about the slip of your grip
on the demon’s horn that brought you here.

Meanwhile, on Earth, your family sits shiv’ah for your broken starlight,
reciting Kaddish Yehe Shelama Rabba into their tear-stained cosmos.
While they grieve, we will keep wondering
why Saturn shakes some of us loose and leaves others intact;
we will keep marveling at the difference between
the living and the dead.

Written 7/26/11
© 2011 Nicole Nicholson. All Rights Reserved.
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This poem was written for this week’s We Write Poems Prompt, Parallel Lines. I considered the concept of the Saturn return in light of Amy Winehouse’s recent death at the age of 27. Rest in Peace, Amy. I hope this poem did you justice.

-Nicole
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