Scouring

A little kink at the center

Played out all the way to the end—

Gigantic mouthful of nothing—

It’s the power of sympathy

Versus the triumph of nature

We’d like to see out our window,

Not indications or forecasts,

Not only probabilities,

Sympathy. We can hardly bring

Ourselves to keep on bringing it

For each other caught in life’s plight,

Picking out our closest teammates

And making enemies of each

Other. The world could barely bring

Itself to create us at all.

Even on this living planet,

Alive for a few billion years,

How many strategies tried first?

The cost of us, our sympathy,

Little as we have of it, begs

The question if we were worth it.

Or should we think of sympathy

As kin to that kink in the light

Near the core of a galaxy,

That little bright spot that tells us

Where the black holes eat each other

In a fury of waves and dust?

If in colossal swirls of stars

We find that kink of light diffused,

At least we know the monster left.