Overread at Table 1: Halfway to the Stars

Everyone at every moment is halfway to the stars.
Each moment is frozen in time and arranged end to end with each other
like the dominoes when playing Mexican Train.

Occasionally everyone stops for a moment to smile at one another.
Those are the moments just after the hurricane floods
have left everyone homeless, equal.  Everyone knee-deep
in the same water, with the metal armrests of lawn furniture
floating by our calves, unseen under the mud, ready to slash our flesh
with the gift of tetanus.

And when we are placed in boxes, lengthwise, or
our ashes scattered by family hands into streams in manicured
city parks, we sink down under the earth where the other
dead things moan, and only then do we know that

even though we were never more than halfway to the stars,
and even though we all were sucked back into the earth,
at least we had one moment where we were
equally bathed in the
light of our indifference.




MR
2020-0116