Oh, I can hear the crickets swarm, on warm starry nights harping
rhapsodies: it's as if their surf-like sighs might span even light years.
When fireflies … get the act together… right? Teaching rainbows,
jelly fish, meteors' moons and tides: how to fluoresce in light years.
A hypothalamic filament that crackled ( zzzzzzzzzzzt ) when cordite
split the banyan: ablaze from heights of light, a candle made of years.
I wonder if Sagan or Hawking knew how loneliness felt to a comet
in Orion's belt, humping its own tail; oroborus for a million light years.
Yes, all the rage, all the rage when men begin to gauge distance via
Time; as dotted lines on a freeway flit … in endless fits of white years.
In other words what angels say, sotto voce, tangled up with hopeless
recidivists: in one ear: LIGHT; the other might take many, many years.
Dennis Mahagin is a poet from eastern Washington state. His writing appears in Exquisite Corpse, 3 A.M., 42opus, Stirring, Absinthe Literary Review, Prime Number, Juked, Smokelong Quarterly, Night Train, Pank, Storyglossia, and The Nervous Breakdown. He's also an editor of fiction and poetry at Frigg Magazine.
