The clouds thicken
near the horizon–
There are rainbows in them,
Halos of light stretching out
from this soot city
Tears slide down the
glass face of a building.
A moan is carried from
a subway tunnel.
Tension is carried on your shoulders
like twin caskets full of grief.
There is a world out there that doesn’t
breathe like this:
Sighs of smog,
spits, grunts, and shouts–some
good-natured, others primal.
On a sky-blue lake
There is a father in a boat
teaching his son to bait a hook.
On a windy mountaintop
A Buddhist Monk sits for years, ignoring the divine
panorama before him so as to
not miss enlightenment when she comes calling.
In a dusky park two eigth graders
relish the passion of an adult kiss for the first time.
A person meets their soulmate and proposes
on their second date. A wedding is imminent.
A child loses her first tooth. A bird flies
out of her mouth. A chapel burns. A forest
wails. A priest breaks a vow. A drunk
driver wakes from a coma to his little sister’s
sleeping face. A birthday. A sunset. A high five.
A song screamed out open car windows in a
traffic jam because fuck any other way.
All these bubbles of existence
oceans away from each other
swimming the same current.
And maybe they exist here too.
But it’s different.
It’s different, out of shape,
shaken, stirred, blended,
contorted–It
looks the same but tastes different.
Until the fall of ego
Becomes purposeful humility
Like examining one’s hands
and noticing how much they’ve aged.
