We have obscured points-of-view
From where we cling so earnest,
To this one rock among the few
That orbits ‘round that furnace.

But when we’re on the other side
Of our boulder, deep in night,
The stars blaze in the sky so wide
Such a majestic, unreal sight.

Lay down sometime, upon the snow,
In a treeless, open place.
As the spinning Earth below
Tries to throw you into space.

Do it now, you’re in your prime.
Take up your position!
If you let go at the perfect time
You’ll fly out on your mission.

Choose a spot that’s cold and clear
Where just last night it snowed.
Then punch out through the stratosphere
And let your head explode.

A little oasis occupied in a cafe
that approaches capacity.
Three opposite, two adjacent,
a couple at the windows to the right.
Six or seven more around the corner, out of view

Early twenties guy, has a slightly too-small zippered sweater,
with head down and a two-handed hold on his phone
the left relinquishes its grip for a minute to wipe across his face.

Late fifties man in a blue,zipped, baggy, sweat shirt
and early-nineties hair gone grey.
A phone too, but of a more palm-and-fingertip interaction
with pursed lips and an occasional surveying of the room.

A quiet girl at my right leaves and four chatty middle-aged yoga ladies
squeeze onto the table for two.
They obliterate my concentration
and I resort to a cocoon of headphone noise.
Their too-strong perfume forms a veritable blue cloud
and leaks into the taste of my tea.

Like a back-lot set between movies
Or a radio-active Soviet village, abandoned and vacant
The cold January sun illuminates
A first-day-of-the-year neighbourhood
Unmarked by human presence.

Snow skiffs are the only activity
And frosted, black-green lawns
Retaining their last tending in an icy stasis
Everything remains empty and frozen
As the clock ticks relentlessly
Into another year.

Steps taken together over scarred, torn soil
And songs sung quietly together,
In an explosion-punctured night
With mouths just a breath's distance apart.
Smokey winds drifted over the pockmarked land,
The glow would never really let the night settle in,
When the sun left again with the refugees.

And these threads we carried for decades
Until they were small traces in a modern blanket
Woven with absurd cords of boredom and apathy.
Yet we still feel the anticipation
When we hold the other's hand
Of the sudden, desperate clench
Of a too-close escape.

Catch the one you beckoned
To fall down to you
Out of the deep black sky.
It burns unless you play it
Quickly from hand to hand.
As beautiful and sparkling,
As glowing and exotic.
You cannot too soon
Find a ladder tall enough
To place the jewel back
From whence it came.

The soaking ink
The doppler-shifted music
The refracting light

The gravity pulls
The magnetic-norths repel
The sticky vacuum ether

A falling stone
A drifting feather
A stationary wind

A silent name
A population disinterested
A common, universal secret

The sharp middle
The undulating plane
The slowly rising soil

Sensation and intuition
Without and within
Together in massive isolation.

A burden looms
A curse against the destination
So seemingly attainable
When setting out upon the road
And making first steps
In untrodden snow.

Around each corner
Another barrier rises above the path.
Yet another stalwart mountain.
Cannot one day be easy on the journey?
Each makes the distant goal seem more futile.

Yet the base of the hill gives way
To the persistence of small steps
As surely as the summit does.
The tough slopes seem insurmountable
But have no reply
To the inching progress
Of one foot
Placed
In front
Of the other.

And as rest comes at last upon the crest,
And yet a thousand more peaks still rise in the distance,
This one achieved goes into your pocket.
Credentials against which
All the rest will fall.