Scale and Proximity

Autumn-bright day,
the sky chalky blue,
the colors of the leaves
still clinging to the
trees now faded to
a deep red, but
still vibrant against
the clarity of the
morning,

Even cars refusing the
drab nature of a
city’s impending
winter, the traffic
sedate and almost
satisfied for once,
no jockeying for
position, but I think
that I’m probably
projecting these things,
or their meanings, in
any case,

Because, though most
everything has failed
and the world is spinning
through an uncaring,
chill universe where we
are just an incident, a stage
of minor interest among
the dust and vapor of
galaxies and globular
clusters being born and
slowly sucking inwards
toward the supermassive
black holes tearing at the
fabric of reality,

I have incidentally done
a few things right, and
perhaps feel the faintest
moment of satisfaction,
of peace here next to
the big windows, the
air artificially warm,
the leaves falling slow
on a quiet day, the
intricate shadows between
the bricks of the old
building across the road
hinting at the sun’s angle,
the flags, one white, one
blue, moving easy on
the higher air below
the clock tower,

And men wearing English
hats on their way by seem
friendly to me, their quick
step and slight cough, passing
the barren smaller trees with
their naked limbs without
any hint that they connote
hopelessness and death,

And a woman in a great,
heavy red coat and scarf,
formless and almost secret
in her identity, pushing a
baby’s carriage south as
the chromed motorcycle
and its obdurate driver
brave that same chill in
leather and a mail delivery
truck with bright brown
sides comes to a halt on
the road, perhaps to disgorge
gifts for the upcoming
holiday’s consumer cheer,

And I am here, and working,
and there is no misery in me,
though the scars of those
rougher emotions linger
on my spirit close enough,
like the impressions of
words written on pages
now discarded from the
notebook, and I am so
immaculately imperfect
that these moments are
fleeting,

And it is liberating
to know my own insignificance
in the universe, the inanities
of my limited viewpoint,
the foolishness of my philosophy,
the brevity of all that is me,
a simple binary against the
scale of all that is, a fraction
of a fraction of a fraction in
which the zero turns to one
and I am,

And the breath goes easily out
of my body and is drawn back
in, these petty magicks of which
I am composed, this small universe
within me where tiny beings
exist, where atom becomes
molecule and molecule becomes
cell, and on to tissues rife with
their own private sounds and
furies, and it comes to me that
importance is just a matter of
scale and proximity, that an
incipient blockage of an artery
in my body is as important
to this private galaxy of blood
and bone as a bulging red
giant devouring its planets
and shedding clouds of
helium into the eternal
night would be to some
distant solar system far
beyond our telescopes’
range,

And a pleasant fall day,
however short, can grow
to be equal to all unwitnessed
eternities in every nebula
and pulsar and quasar in
the night’s ineffable depth,
at least to me.