We put these offerings out
into the blunt nothing of tomorrow,
then wheel about and drift off
impatient to gather more
and all our works and amusements
all delights and suffering
lie unclaimed
sliding into yesterdays
they will waste until our bones
are no more than a smear
beneath a rubble
until we and everything
known to our kind
have vaporized and seeded the cosmos
and somewhere the light is lifting
and fragments gather into wholes
Some returned,
some did not.
One had lost an arm
another was blinded.
One could never
walk straight again,
and still another
could only sleep
in splintered dreams.
Among the worst
were those who went
thinking only of
good and noble deeds,
their hearts shattered
beyond repair.
“But Memphis ain’t no ‘count,”
they’ll say. Maybe
what they don’t like
is this: Memphis
don’t go shufflin’ ’round
to the back door
hat in hand.
She just walks right up
to the front,
through the door,
and throws her hat
on the hallway tree,
where it spins a couple of times
before settling in.
A man is in a sphere
all he knows is
what hits the outer membrane
–a series of taps,
bright lights,
red, green, sepia
seeping through
a great shaking
and rumbling pervades,
some rhythmic,
some not
from these scraps
an omniverse
known only
to himself
emerges, like some
great and vast
butterfly, floating
above a sleeping figure.
Always the world tilts dangerously
toward the brink, begging only
a finger’s nudge
–all it would take—
deftly moving aside
at the last moment
like a taiji master
a dance so subtle it fools
no one and everyone alike
the world does not end
does not even refuse to end
but continues out of indifference
–Wait – you say – it ended for me
and perhaps you – and I say
no, we are still here
even as we dispute the very
fact of existence, proof, you see,
of our errors
exiles child 