Arrival (a poem)

Thursday, July 10, 2025

✦ THE WILD CRYSTAL OF ARRIVAL ✦

What Comes With the Frigate

The frigate split the sky like a blade,
not of conquest—
but of memory returning.

It came bearing all things at once:
a ration, a coffin, a whispered name,
orders tucked inside propaganda wings.

No one ran.
They just watched—
as dust rose like ghosts in salute.

Inside the hull:
aid that stings,
fire wrapped in velvet codes,
a courier who cannot speak
of what he saw
between two jumps.

The rot was not born in the hull.
It bloomed in chambers of law,
in velvet chairs where
peace was bartered
for precision.

The Emperor was not seized—
he was grown,
like mold
in the wounds of good men
who chose silence.

The clones did not question.
The Jedi did not scream.
The people voted,
and forgot to listen.

And still,
the wild remains.
In the way the trees lean,
the way the dust resists landing,
in children who chase the shadow
and call it a bird,
not a war.

Let the crystal remember:
Every arrival is a wound
dressed as help,
and a howl just beneath
the landing gear.