Everything alive! We’re bright light searing white and blackness absolute or rocks on a desolate moon. Scorched and frozen, I feel hard brittle angles … and … and I’m all the time it takes to break into dust. We’re bubbles dizzying up from a waterfall’s plunge, windblown grass hissing in satin waves.

I’m infinite power blasting into existence, casting whirling galaxies and gulping black holes.

A solitary quark in nowhere and nowhen, a blue speck of iridescence in the eye of a butterfly wing.

We’re the twists of a limb bearing rustling leaves, and thoughts in the mind of a badger.

Or the shock of a sunbeam on tossed hair. I can be the raucous howl of the calliope and the grind of machinery under a rippling floor, up and down, under wooden horses and shouting children hanging on tight.

I’ve been the blue scar on a coal-miner’s jaw, the sharp musk of his skin and the triumphant blast of a fart.

Oh! … I’ve been a human: ignorant of everything and scared of death: so alone among others. Such existence holds your attention – you transient captive, you: fear not!

Now I’m these words in your head, a patter of black spots as a rain shower stipples granite pebbles … the stillness and silence at the end of everything, air shifting as a drop of sweat falls.

©Gary Bonn, 2020