Look to the Stars

February 5, 2026

Over the past two weeks, since the murder of Alex Pretti by ICE “agents” on the streets of Minneapolis, I’ve tried to put my feelings into words, wishing that the bullets that spewed from those guns into Pretti’s back would have moved as slowly as the ink from my pen. I cannot find the words for the events that sear my soul:  ICE, innocent immigrant detainees, cities in turmoil, families torn apart, fair elections threatened, lies and more lies, Christianity and common decency usurped, cover-ups, and on and on. I grieve for my country. I ask forgiveness for my country. I ask help and healing for my country.

I cannot form the words of my heart, but poet Ada Limón has done so, and I feel compelled to share her heart, her wisdom, her song of reality and hope with you.

Dead Stars

Out here, there’s a bowing even the trees are doing.
Winter’s icy hand at the back of all of us.
Black bark, slick yellow leaves, a kind of stillness that feels
so mute it’s almost in another year.

I am a hearth of spiders these days: a nest of trying.

We point out the stars that make Orion as we take out
the trash, the rolling containers a song of suburban thunder.

It’s almost romantic as we adjust the waxy blue
recycling bin until you say, Man, we should really learn
some new constellations.

And it’s true. We keep forgetting about Antlia, Centaurus,
Draco, Lacerta, Hydra, Lyra, Lynx.

But mostly we’re forgetting we’re dead stars too, my mouth is full
       of dust and I wish to reclaim the rising—

to lean in the spotlight of streetlight with you, toward
what’s larger within us, toward how we were born.

Look, we are not unspectacular things.
We’ve come this far, survived this much. What

would happen if we decided to survive more? To love harder?

What if we stood up with our synapses and flesh and said, No.
     No, to the rising tides.

Stood for the many mute mouths of the sea, of the land?

What would happen if we used our bodies to bargain

for the safety of others, for earth,
if we declared a clean night, if we stopped being terrified,

if we launched our demands into the sky, made ourselves so big
people could point to us with the arrows they make in their minds,

rolling their trash bins out, after all of this is over?

(c) Ada Limón

What if we said, “No. No, to the rising tides?” ~ Rosemary

Dead Stars from The Carrying (Milkweed Editions, 2018) by Ada Limón. Copyright © 2018 by Ada Limón. 

Ada Limon is the 24th Poet Laureate of the United States.