Taking the Stars Inside

with thanks to learners at HMP Northumberland

I collect the stars from Kielder Forest

driving two miles down a single track road

to the observatory.

I fill my pockets,

fold hot stars into the pages of poems

and later, pour them into grey trays

to be searched for banned substances. 

It depends on your block, they tell me.

Whether in those nights of frantic, broken sleep

you see floodlights or galaxies.

Sat around a table in a room lined with barbers’ chairs,

we unpick constellations dot by dot,

drawing million-mile lines between them and us,

likening the universe to an hourglass

where we are all, I guess, doing time.

One man describes a night at camp

where the stars felt so close

it was as if they hung on strings.

Another, our resident philosopher,

describes knowledge as

a justified belief -

that the impact something makes

is what makes it real.

Like all of the astronomers before us, 

these men are trying to find order

in the chaos.

And as we work, an oystercatcher,

unfazed by the barbed wire,

makes her yearly nest

in the drain outside the education block;

the chicks, the lads say

look like tennis balls with legs, 

the eggs white

but speckled black, as if with interstellar dust.

I guess I thought 

people who had experienced such darkness

might try to steal your light,

not knowing you can take it to them 

and become brighter,

burning up as you enter

their atmosphere

And though very few would consider themselves free

And though when they watch the stars they are looking back

light years into their past, 

there’s a sense that it also gives them

a future

that is free

for them to imagine.