Dolphins of the Sky

“I’ll look at the waves, look at the sand, look 

at what man has created around it,” he said. 

“It’s all going to end sooner or later and 

what remains is naked nature.”

Naked nature veins deeper than life.

Naked nature thrives on Mars—that is,

If it’s not too inappropriate

To write a world “thrives” in the absence

Of death or life. But that’s exactly

What I want to write. There is nature,

There are beings and ways of being

Extending past living and dying

In all named and unnamed dimensions,

And, yes, an element of comfort

Shines out of the heartless stars at night.

It’s fun to carve them constellations,

To hunt them for stories like our lives,

Call them rivers and monsters, lovers

Separated, injured, or betrayed,

Corpses magicked to heavenly heights.

A child I know invented her own

Names for some of them, little egg myths

Such as, “girl protecting the dragon”

And, “dolphins of the sky.” There. You see?

Magic, isn’t it, how lives dream lives?

But there’s a comfort past life’s magic,

Even if comfort’s just part of life—

Only life needs it. That’s the comfort

In seeing nature’s plain existence

Also gleams and shifts and is not life.