If this tree
should ever come to fall

Let its gnarly limbs
point up to heaven

If its heart
should ever come to a stall

Let it die
with errors pardoned
and sins forgiven

Flowers killed by first frost,
Lovers lost to a language barrier,
Late-night trains carrying no passengers,
The bittersweet dregs from the cup we call life;
These are things sorrowful beyond compare,
Things that sing of emptiness,
And brutality, and, as always,
The space between us –
Yawning and gaping like the interstellar void;
Yet these are the things that draw us together,
That make us one;
These are the things we share,
Despite the dismal reality
That even the atoms within us,
Cluttered so close, yet so far,
Are mostly just
Empty space
(    .    )