Southern Cross

The name alone can conjure better times, a happiness that's always out of reach, evocative of palm fronds on the beach, exotic nights in far-off summer climes, and things that are impossibly sublime. But if imagination overreach is far more often honored in the breach, perhaps our dearest hurt can live in rhyme. Does distance lend enchantment to the view? Is beauty just a bubble of the brain? Or is it something real, that will remain when we're long gone? Those stars, so cool, so blue, so independent, splendid, hang there, vain, indifferent to us and our sweet pain.