Aden Thomas lives in Laramie WY with his wife and two sons. His work has previously been featured in Common Ground Review, Dressing Room Poetry Journal, The San Pedro Review, The Red River Review, The Road Not Taken, The Owen Wister Review, WestWard Quarterly, and the Avalon Literary Review, among others. Visit his website.

The Lineage of Stars
By Aden Thomas

So many poems have come before, it gets
a little overwhelming. Pardon then
this poem for its timidity. Forgive
me, its creator, for considering
the fate of my tiny fare (or so I think
it burns) in galaxies of poems that hurtle
across the universe at phantom speeds
towards the other galaxies of poems,
billions of them, sometimes exploding in
a supernova pyre light-years away.
Still, to burn near burning bests no fire at all,
so I dip my finger in these stardust streams
and trace my fragile poem still glowing hot
among the lineage of all these stars.