I'm not here to write romantic (when I try it sounds sarcastic)
and I'm not here to talk about the world we look out on
through eye windows- it's only earthy, it's only dust
and too much rain from too much sky
or too much space or too much city,
too sooty, too dry.

I can't find the romance in a square of tarmac
or even the rolls of sloping hills.
Give me discourse on the stratosphere-
for that is something I can lust over-
on heaven and on hell and on all the demons between.

Talk to me about the universe, per aruda ad astra.
Write something for me and show me only when I can
learn from it that there's more than
the shimmering stretch of stone and soil
between me and my appointment tomorrow at half past ten.

It's not much to ask, when you think about it
in a waiting room where minds have been lost;
It's not much to ask to want a reminder
that our lives are more
than what listlessly lolls beneath our feet
and that their prints are more precious
than just stamps on sand or concrete.