The Astronaut
I give off this image of steady and routined and true
when all that always lifts me is the soaring mind,
free and unencumbered, making lists of things so
choosing and doing without judgment and crime.
It’s in the air. It’s waiting to land. It’s in the block
of time we’ve committed to and the alone it affords,
the order and the anticipation, the universe in
the length of the cigarette. You might think these
are artificial boxes and that to be truly free you
must rid yourself of these lands of markers, but
I say, sure, yes, maybe in a perfect world, whatever
that is. I’m afraid of giving in totally to that urge
because it would be like the end of parents, lovers,
history and child, work and systems of meaning,
and everyone else like out in space without a suit,
just waiting down those fatally sublime moments,
those heavens in the seconds spiraling softly in
new air until utterly and, finally, this silence.