Tamar Yoseloff - Barnard’s Star

The angels dancing on a pin’s head,              
the UFO glittering in the night,                     
the aura left after you have gone––               
all of them in my mind.                      

That faint red dwarf that passes
overhead when I am boiling a kettle  
or making the bed
is invisible to the naked eye,

a ball of hydrogen and helium
making for the sun
over eighty miles a second,
certain of its course,

but I know it’s there, just as I steer
through a darkened room
by trust, its familiar contours
charted on my fingers.

This poem is published as part of National Poetry Day 2012, theme: stars.

Tamar Yoseloff was born in the US in 1965. Since moving to London in 1987 she has been the organiser of the Terrible Beauty reading series at the Troubadour Coffee House, reviews editor of Poetry London magazine, and from 2000 to 2007, programme co-ordinator for the Poetry School. She currently works as a freelance tutor in creative writing. Her most recent book, Formerly, is a sonnet sequence written in collaboration with photographer Vici MacDonald, commemorating the forgotten corners of a London now fast disappearing.

Well Versed is edited by Jody Porter

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