Bottle caps, broken glass,
dried chewing gum from persons passed,
and you.
You-there.
Obliterated.

Condemned to die
by thoughtless giants:
passers-by with no alliance
to rain, nor sun,
nor earth or its creatures smaller than their thumb.

Your brothers lie about you
and cousins lie around;
awareness reaching only feeling--
feeling only reaching now
and unforgiving ground.

Scattered masses who dared
to run from home
to find the rain--
to feel the air
so moist it could
sustain a life--
just once. Just one time.

To dream that a child of the earth
could feel the light,
the freedom within thinner space
before, again, within the ground to be encased.

To play like children often do,
those wet-shoed, runny nosed few.
To thrive without surviving--

But this is the price you pay
to live so explosively before dying.

I wish that I could see
through your eyes the dream
that makes it worth it
to yield to fate in exchange
for a dance beneath the open sky.

Or do you know?
I'm sure you do.
I like to imagine I would,
if I were you

Do you realize your mistake?
Before the sun, your life will take?

And if, again you had the choice,
would you still emerge from earth's embrace for skys rejoice?

I'd like to think you would.

You.
Ceased-to-be, but still are;
near to home, and somehow far;
lost from earth but found by me,
crushed and trampled.
Immobile,
but free.

Here there lies bottle caps and broken glass,
dried chewing gum from persons passed:
Things I would not touch if asked,

and then you.
You-there.
Obliterated.