“So Many Stars” by Rosalie Osmond

Poetry Pause is the League of Canadian Poets’ daily poetry dispatch. Read “So Many Stars” by Rosalie Osmond, part of the League’s Fresh Voices program.


So Many Stars

By Rosalie Osmond

Starsโ€”
a luminescent night by the sea,
soft-breathing surf:

โ€œSo many stars!
Theyโ€™re waving at me.โ€

A small child, roused from first sleep,
with reddish curls and radiant eyes,
squirms and twists in her motherโ€™s arms,
lifting her hands up to the sky,
to hail that heavenly panoply.

She is the center of sea and sky.

How can she know

she will live her life
under the gaze of their indifference?


Copyright ยฉ Rosalie Osmond

Rosalie Osmond is the author of five books, three academic and two fiction with a third novel accepted for publication. Both novels were short-listed for the Dartmouth Book Award. She won the Rita Joe Poetry Prize in 2019. She has lived and studied in Canada, England, and the United States, and has taught English Literature at university level in both Canada and the U.K. She now lives in Lunenburg, N.S.

Fresh Voices is a publication and workshop program created by and for the League’s associate members, curated and edited by Erin Vance.


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