Star count

“Body count

“We have learnt to crane our necks
above the stink and the plastic,
to where Baba’s finger draws silver triangles in the dark….

That’s the North Star, he says,”

We have learnt, after all, my dear
to crane our necks, beautifully
above the rot and the fish smell
of sins and human longing…””

Momina Masood

Baba showed her the North star and probably the earliest child star Sirius .They craned their necks and craned till they would fall on their backs .Into this resulting astral confusion ,Baba lost his neck ,as the neck became a back from which Baba never arose.

In the meantime we are here , doing a body count of our stars from his last count.

* Last count
The news came in the morning. The young man who had on the previous night pointed the stars to his daughter found himself turned into one .Forty four was no time for turning a star.

Look at the Mars, burning brightly, he had said to a wide-eyed daughter. In the morning he was found absolutely blue. The heart stopped at 3 A.M. trying to gauge the depths of an astral sky.

Did he die in sleep? Was he in a dream he never woke up to recount?