Hands in my pockets, I came up with nothing
but keepsakes of dust, a dulled archipelago of air
stretching past my arms . . . night winds galloping
toward the islands at the end of the sea.
All that spun
and landed here, turned out to be those like myself,
walking around each morning with our ticket stubs
of intuition, our recent best guesses . . . looking up
through a vacancy of trees to a couple rags of cloud
caught there, dingy blossoms floating branch to
branch.
Neruda said the stones fell from the sky,
and science backs him up—all our beginnings
blasting out and dropping here or there beneath
the dark. . . .
Nothing—not the perfect restatement
of waves nor the borderless dominion of birds, not
the Southern Cross shimmering like a signet of hope—
has saved the least of us in our sleep.
Shuffling down
the path in the park, I go on whistling what was once
considered a lively tune, thankful to even be a satchel
of ligaments and bone still able to transact enough chemicals,
one neuron to another,
that I can appreciate the day lilies,
star jasmine, and have some idea about what’s missing
when a streak of grey engraves hosannas of moonlight,
the spindrift off the rocks, anything that sounds
remotely like a prayer
sent into the air to a god who,
in his infinite memory, must know he abandoned us
here—so many self-conscious molecular assemblies—
specs in a starry whirlwind of desire.
Copyright © 2025 by Christopher Buckley. Originally published in Poem-a-Day on May 27, 2025, by the Academy of American Poets.
