no two ways

in repetitions of difference,
we identify, sometimes as stars
sometimes as nothing
and sometimes,
not knowing cloud for the vapour it is
nor how it changes
we think to know how one thing
is not another

    no night is truly dark
    no night truly lit
    by what little light there is

opposites follow us
like the moon’s hard edge
in a late winter sky
and define the lives we live
according to
what is and what is not
as if all of it
was written in the heavens

    I am, I am not
    you are, you are not
    no two ways about it

until cloud
or an earthbound mist
descends
in the half-seen darkness
and covers the eyes
with the otherness of stars
and questions
everything we thought
and everything
that flies between.

© BH, 2026

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I read this to my writers’ group. The reactions were favourable.

I was exploring difference and opposites, asking: do we have dichotomy, an either-or split where one thing is or is not, with no shades between? Is there a rule-book for opposites? Is there room for duality or multiplicity?

We live in a world that seems to define itself as black or white, right or wrong.

But I don’t buy the black-and-white world. I don’t accept if-you’re-not with-us-you’re-against. The entire universe is built on probabilities, shades of difference illuminating the tiny spectrum of everything we imagine to be everything.

So, the stars have it. And, as Sagan said, 'we are all made of star stuff.‘

There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio, than are dreamt of in your philosophy.