We do not, perhaps, expect the very sky
To descend upon us, all chunks and wedges
As it did upon the simple, deluded chick
Of the nursery rhyme of long ago
(A child’s verse, perhaps, but promulgated and purveyed
By those older, perhaps wiser, yet still wholly unable
To shake the terror of the meteorological and inexplicable.)
We have, as we have aged,
Eschewed the black-and-white of childhood cosmology
In order to make our gray-tinged bargain with the heavens,
Asking not for its benediction,
But content ourselves with negotiating
For a lack of outright malevolence,
And though our rationality tells us
It cannot come down on us chock-a-block and helter-skelter,
We nonetheless study the sky with wariness
Poorly cloaked as studious indifference.