Dave Bonta's "Asterisk" starts from a simple idea: the little star-shaped symbol we use in writing is also a tiny image of the stars in the sky. Both are small because they are far away, or perhaps far away because they are small. The opening line plays with that confusion of size and distance.
From there the poem turns playful and a little strange. The asterisk "calls" and "leaves a message," as if it were a phone, and when you turn the volume up, all you hear is something like a small fan, a quiet, ordinary hum. The speaker seems amused and a bit wistful, listening hard for meaning and getting only background noise.
The ending jokes that in another universe stars look like asterisks, and books with too many footnotes collapse into black holes. It's a witty image of text pulling everything toward itself. The mood is light, curious, and quietly dreamy, mixing the cosmic with the bookish.