Diffident starshine marred by cloudware,
Orion testing his bow, bull’s-eye Earth
adrift in its own juices, time’s cauldron
on a low simmer, Luna fretting offstage,
not usually one for fluffing her lines,
Sirius below the horizon, madly impatient,
barking up the wrong tree, in so many words,
our race drunk-walking the astrophysical gulch
we passengers nicknamed Spaceship Earth,
regardless of the anthropomorphic slant,
never mind the fact we’re only human,
know-it-all know-nothings in the unknowable,
the span of a life a cosmic instant,
our allotted time just another dark matter.