Image © Ralph McQuarrie
To save the galaxy is no big deal,
but to save it twice is much more than luck.
Two Death Stars, two planet-sized fists of steel
adrift in space, waiting to run amuck
among unassuming planets that may
or may not have been harboring rebels,
the second born out of the steely grey
ashes of the first: they were floating hells.
Yet with the Force behind him like a field
of light, Luke destroyed both, blowing up one,
and, even as his friends took down the shield,
crept stealthily through space to land upon
the second, and with his green light saber,
excised its dark malignant Emperor.
Andrew Pidoux is the author of Year of the Lion (Salt, 2010). Recent poems of his have appeared in African American Review, Pacific Review, and Punchnel’s, stories in FishFood, Pennsylvania Literary Journal, and Turk’s Head Review, and comics in Forge and Wilderness House.