My God, It's Full of Stars

We like to think of it as parallel to what we know,

Only bigger.

One man against the authorities.

Or one man against a city of zombies.

One man 

Who is not, in fact, a man, sent to understand

The caravan of men now chasing him like red ants

Let loose down the pants of America.

Man on the run. Man with a ship to catch, a payload to drop,

This message going out to all of space. . . .

Though

Maybe it’s more like life below the sea: silent,

 Buoyant, bizarrely benign.

Relics

Of an outmoded design.

Some like to imagine

A cosmic mother watching through a spray of stars, 

Mouthing yes, yes as we toddle toward the light

,Biting her lip if we teeter at some ledge.

Longing

To sweep us to her breast, she hopes for the best 

While the father storms through adjacent room

Ranting with the force of Kingdom Come,

Not caring anymore what might snap us in its jaw. 

Sometimes, what I see is a library in a rural community.

All the tall shelves in the big open room. And the pencils

In a cup at Circulation, gnawed on by the entire population

The books have lived here all along, belonging

For weeks at a time to one or another in the brief sequence

Of family names, speaking (at night mostly) to a face,

 A pair of eyes.

The most remarkable lies.