The Sky

There was a plan one day.

Some historical moment:

A syzygy of thoughts.

One solar resolve.

But ever since this world cooled

From steaming, focused everything

When the universe realized emptiness,

Suddenly the black appeared between the stars

The gaps standing in for insurmountable scales:

Our crude astronomer’s inch,

A thumbnail sketch onto a swathe of night fabric

Is a frail motion onto a vast murky plane

One step

In a trillion-day walk.

And so where can we go?

What can we look for?

These gassy glares are splattered onto nothing,

Almost too many to number

And hopelessly too many to wrangle,

Or possess beneath the arc of this horizon

Outside these stale echoes

Of millennia’s spent light

And this we understand.

For only maniacs

Paint our hearts with the stars,

And only madmen

Place Heaven on Earth

But in the sparse confusion

Of scattered drops of cold milk

On our obsidian cosmic window

Together we write for ourselves a single name

For these hordes:

The sky.