Grab any day and it is not enough.
We are unbearably alert,
afraid that there is nothing else out there,
yet hopeful as skies darken
and earth calms down enough
for us to search out what might lie hidden.
There is a slight stammer when we speak,
which we must always own,
carried casually, like spindrift,
into the warp and weft of an early morning horizon,
sluicing through a swarm of stars.
We heard The Big Bang linger
as dust settled into the shape of us,
a bit of buff and sparkle
as we warmed up,
clusters of maverick molecules
becoming question-making machines.
Was it a special sprinkling
which formed itself into longing,
that lonesome pleading with the universe
to whisper possibility along its fault lines,
cracks cackling with mystery at the edges?
This is not hubris. We do not search
for a creature who will scan
the iris of our eyes,
probe the shape of our lips for truth.
We do not need a canary-yellow caged mind
that will latch on to ours.
We need to know only that they are out there,
sweet sentient scraps in an ignorant universe,
almost like ourselves, but with the strut of magic to them,
that we are not incurably alone in the crisp after-cold,
a wayward excess of that first scorching swirl.
Vist Marie at http://mariemacsweeney.com.