Third Rock from the Sun

That streetlight looks like the slicked backbone

            of a dead tree in the rain, its green lamp blazing

like the first neon fig glowing in the first garden

            on a continent that split away from Africa

from which floated away Brazil. Why are we not

            more amazed by the constellations, all those flung

stars held together by the thinnest filaments

            of our evolved, image making brains. For instance,

here we are in the middle of another Autumn,

            plummeting through a universe that made us

from its shattering and dust, stooping

            now to pluck an orange leaf from the sidewalk,

a small veined hand we hold in an open palm

            as we walk through the park on a weekend we

invented so we would have time to spare. Time,

            another idea we devised so the days would have

an epilogue, precise, unwavering, a pendulum

            strung above our heads.  When was the sun

enough? The moon with its diminishing face?

            The sea with its nets of fish? The meadow’s

yellow baskets of grain? If I was in charge

            I’d say leave them there on their backs

in the grass, wondering, eating berries

            and rolling toward each other’s naked bodies

for warmth, for something we’ve yet to name,

            when the leaves were turning colors in their dying

and we didn’t know why, or that they would return,

            bud and green. One of a billion

small miracles. This planet will again be stone.