The furthest thing from me
is resolution.
Like the furthest galaxies
it flies away from me
at top speeds.
There’s no use chasing it.
No lasso that would catch it.
Now
is an undone dress
only halfway buttoned up.
And some buttoned wrong.
Mismatching keyholes in a rush
to get downstairs and out the slamming screen door.
Already my closure
is passing Mars and then
Jupiter (this takes time,)
Saturn and her stony rings (a dangerous business,)
Uranus (nothing but a cold shoulder,)
Neptune (my ruling planet,)
it comes to Pluto (counted and counted again,)
then zips out into the dark beyond.
I am left standing,
my hand outstretched.
Barefoot in a haphazard ant pile
and just before they sting
there is a pearl of hope.
One vast twinkle and I think,
perhaps my ending will fall.
Not like a guillotine.
More like a baseball.
As if the gravity of our painful planet
could tug at something so far gone.
But the ants bite
like the opening seconds of Stravinsky’s
“The Augurs Of Spring.”
I am reminded of myself
on planet Earth
and I know this is how everything is.
Unpunctuated.