. . . go out into the evening,
    leaving your room, of which you know each bit,
    your house is the last before the infinite, . . .
    (from Rainer Maria Rilke's "Eingang", MacIntyre translation)
  
The light which strikes my retina
as I look at the Great Galaxy in Andromeda
left there two million years ago.
(Hominids made tools from stone then, but had not yet    
    learned the use of fire.
Genetic material from certain of these hominids has been passed
from one being to another and now is in my own body.)
  
Millennia from now, humans who have
colonized the farthest reaches of our galaxy,
laboriously creating and maintaining Earth-like atmospheres,
will marvel that there once was a place so perfectly suited to
    human life
that such labor was unnecessary. (Just as we marvel that orchids,
whose precise temperature and humidity requirements would seem to necessitate a greenhouse, grow wild in the Amazon.)
  
I cannot believe in a personal God,
intervening in human affairs, but stand in awe
of the terrible force which set the stars and galaxies in motion
--strewing them like so much confetti--;
the life-force running through each living creature,                                              
as straight and true as a ray of light from that galaxy in Andromeda,
willing us to live, grow and be fruitful.

Oh Rick, if only things were so simple. . . .
If only there were Nazis shooting children,
bullies like Major Strasser waiting to take over,
women like Ilsa --
so beautiful and passionate
that just the memory of their love, just the shadow,
is enough.
We would sing the Marseillaise
and in the air itself,
just breathing in that hot, dry air,
would find all the meaning we need.

But we live in an everyday world,
with everyday human beings.
And we must start again each morning,
with scraps of faith and feeling,
to make the world's meaning in the foundry of our heart.

[by Edna St. Vincent Millay]*
When you are dead, and your disturbing eyes
No more as now their stormy lashes lift
To lance me through...as in the morning skies
One moment, plainly visible in a rift
Of cloud, two splendid planets may appear
And purely blaze, and are at once withdrawn,
What time the watcher in desire and fear
Leans From this chilly window in the dawn...
Shall I be free, shall I be once again
As others are, and count your loss no care?
Oh, never more, till my dissolving brain
Be powerless to evoke you out of air,
Remembered morning stars, more fiercely bright
Than all the Alphas of the actual night!

Playing the waiting game
Each one dancing around the other
Uncertainty building like a storm cloud with each passing
Second
Minute
Moment
Is this real?
Was this whole thing a child's game
Cat and mouse?
Crickets sing their song to the moon
Cars pass
The empty parking lot bathes in street lamp glow
What happens now?

Every time I close my eyes
I see a face,
clear and perfect. Yet

ever changing
like a memory
fading and morphing.

I don't know this face,
who they are or
where they're from.

Why they're in my head.

And at night, those
images morph themselves into dreams,
and I see her again;

her lost blurry eyes
in search of something
they can't find.

And then,
in a brief moment of clarity
they meet mine

and I somehow feel
found again, like a piece
of my soul has been given back.

Every time I try my hardest to hold on,
desperate to stay there with her,
scared of waking up lost.

Sometimes I think
she's just another lost
lonely soul

in search of
an old friend
who she's known forever.

Sometimes I think
she's out there
wandering the world

and that maybe
with some patience and luck
I'll meet her one day.