This Poem, For Example, May Hold You Down

Everyone can

brush their fingertips

along the skin of a universe:

baby cheek,

orange pink of a peach,

lover’s outstretched arm.

Everything is

a vast expanse

inside all these bubbles,

and I don’t even know who I am,

when I’m here every day!

(I’ll never know who you are!)

And so we build

without knowledge

to keep us from flying off

to death,

a thing we want

because it’s simple,

and final, and

guarantees the least peace
we can imagine: unexistence.

Idiots, maybe,

creating not light,

but anchors

to stay here now,

gravity of love

that holds us

down, safe from release

unto the lure of night.

Yes, we all come

to smoking craters

but if we build, add weight,

as constant as breath,

we’ll live on mountaintops,

Kilmanjaros, maybe, where

tourists still climb Mt. St. Helens

to proclaim amazement

at all the life.

Until choice enters
our fabric of space,
our stitch of time.