The things you think about on clear winter nights

August 30, 2012

The things you think about on clear winter nights

A comet criss-crosses through a sky

studded with stars that shine

like city windows, like

sparks of electricity. 

Its hyperbolic trajectory traces

arcs through deep space, or maybe

it hurtles around suns

like an airplane around the earth,

like an electron around a nucleus.

You interstellar traveler,

do you ever get homesick?

I know you race on farther than the glimpse

we catch, faster than numbers race through wires,

or an electrical impulse across synapses in the brain.

Pulled on by gravity, or destiny,

blown on by solar winds,

comet:

I wonder,

do you ever long

for your cold nebula home?

If you could, would you ever return?

Or are you like us,

the planets,

the molecules,

wandering forever and yet

trapped by your routines:

your physics, your fate.