earthen

Trini Rogando

the world ends, but begins again

a million times            with every moment, every choice            teeming infinity is stuffed into

a bottle, endless lifetimes and earths and chances

sailing              on the tides             of the drowning living 

who are cursed with foresight of slithering possibilities

like a flower picked before bloom,        a shameful crime,         it is

that time roots us to one truth, eden’s eternal ellipsis

singular,            continuous,              narrow & real

& shuddering, beaten forward 

forever    trapped          in           our own orbit

corrugated rods burgeon through our celestial bodies 

heavy            mocking guilt         & desperate, ravenous            regret

to cope, say: the living are powerful & weighty & we are able to

ripple cosmic            waves and                      end

the old world to birth a bloody one anew

we cling to          reality fractured into a million frayed                what ifs

finally when sacred day turns to lisping darkness

the earthen             creatures are              lulled by   

the forever rise and fall of the sky 

only here at dusk our hubris quiets

the earth breathes, laden with life

bound by fate’s strings we breathe 

with her under the watchful moon

dreaming of what we do not know

—and the choices we did not make.