That’s us—a mote of dust suspended in a sunbeam—Carl Sagan
as I return to the mesa from a pilgrimage to Prague where the Astronomical Clock is
swaddled in scrim I am in love with Kafka as much as I was at nineteen an irresistible
voice that deepens my life the thrilling discovery of his sketches my body a conduit
butterfly wings quickening me down the cobblestone lanes inside the pale of the castle
we left migrating hummers outside the bedroom we left flannel sheets on the bed
and finches in the backyard and returned to nesting towhees and quail strutting on
the fire anthills like they own the horizon alight with wildfires around the entire
bowl’s rim yet the birds are trilling reborn by overflowing well-water in their basins
I am awed by how life can arise on a planet as long as water is present
the miracle of something so complex something so unlikely to happen and the possibility
that given the required exact right circumstances anything could happen I hold
faith in Hezekiah’s multifaceted orb as it bobbles down the hill my choice of one facet
leading to certain possibilities and then the next plane opens to a certain more but
given the incline no choice can ever lead back to those that were bypassed
this mesa is where I will spend my days as I wrap myself in the tick of the copper clock
time measured instead by the sequencing of the sun a metronomic movement
described by winter’s grasping at warmth followed by the summer shunning of heat
and always the pitfall of endeavoring to hold the spheres still
