Streetlight

Perched on a sagging fence

I think about the stars I can't see

The ones tucked under deep folds of time

Blanketed within a million lifespans

Swaddling the versions of humanity:

Who we were, we are, and could be.

And even still, a million versions of me.

.

Under the frothing stars

There is no better place

To uncover the scent of our thoughts

Fragrant, fecund, and damp.

Fertile clumps of brain matter

Blossoming naked and pink

From florid branches of happenstance

.

From here I can watch us

Smelting those chemical spindles

Or ordinary DNA for our self-deification

A horrific crown, reigning ecological terror

Through barrel-chested claims

That we are stewards of nature

Pleading for heaven to erase the trace of our own mortality.

.

There is nowhere else to go

Aside from the universe of ones and zeros

That we transplanted ourselves into.

Strange rectangular thing!

Small enough to fit in my pocket

Metadata, photos, desires as numerous as the stars

An empty echo chamber of our humanity and nothing more.

.

Yet sometimes I sit at my apartment balcony,

With a smudged glass of cheap wine in hand

Struggling to breathe

As the cars sigh in exhaustion and the coal train slashes

Between potholed intersections and chomping billboards

My hands shield the periphery to plunge deeper

Deeper into that winding, spilling, milky pail.

.

Jet planes lace in the heavens tight

And opaque light

Hardens out the stars,

Like a murky cataract.

The infinite orchard of galaxies

And puffs of cosmic pollen

Lure buzzing stars and draw me in.

.

There!

In that speck of time,

Stretched from my earthen tether,

Fingers wormed around humanity's rotting rail,

My man-made soul glimpses

What could be

In the generous, folding, expanse of time.