Gradations of Place

Three poems on the desire to belong

Photo by Sixties Photography on Unsplash

Entity

Entity, crawling in orthogonal space
Creeping over skies and behind oceans’ deep
Vortical presence in the bottomless reach
What is your name? What do you reap?
Are you Dyson serpent, star eater
Or black hole behemoth of bale?
Do light and darkness quench you
For the sake of our souls ever frail?
Or do you consume neither
Take no umbrage at creation
Offer noteworthy perspective
Yet consume as dictates predation?
Are you beholden to mortality
Incomprehensibility come with a craw?
The stories go in posterity
That with your territory there shall be awe
When the black maw opens wide
And jaws of demise greet the brain
Shred it to subatomic particles
Shear spacetime in twain
And wriggle onward
To the next victim plane
To be divorced from wretched existence
After inquiries echo the countless slain

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Liquid Night

Liquid night presses on the windshield
Bass lines of thunder ponderously pound
Lightning forks the vastly yawning sky
The road vanishes an animal scared in the sound

Traffic’s yellow river barrels forth in the dark
Torrent and crosswinds assail from all sides
Everyone strains for a place to go
Light, home, a place to hide

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Soft

Soft! The rickety cat
Soft! The beat of a heart
Brittle meow, loving purr
At your feet a flop on the back
“Pet me,” he says, “I love you”
He has for as long as he knows
Seasons of life change
And winds reverse in time
But for now
You are his world
Will you choose today
And again tomorrow
To let him be yours?