I
found thee in a foundry, dark and set for allegory,
filled with hammers, forges, catwalks, carts, and slag, piled storey after storey,
found the ever-looping dart-ridden circuit, where we—
where we were not meant to wander in,
where I found thee, and friends and kin,
fighting and fleeing some forces
for something that I can't remember,
and at the shutting down at the end of the time,
I was sitting on a rail with somebody pale and strawberry blonde,
the color of which was a match with the sky
as the sun imperceptibly dawned.
Pieces of everyone reformed and we greeted
each other and I recognized your name and didn't want to let you go but
the world is over.
The plankton do not waste much effort in
a search around to find where they should go;
they just go, and wash out with the tide, and
then I sometimes long to join them, I in
vigil in this verdant, bright lagoon.
The stars above will still provide the plankton
with direction, whether they should look
above or not, or bother to consider
any other factors floating with them
in those cloudy blooms that stir and shake
when all the suns and moons and stars give rise,
through streaming light just shining through the waters,
to shifts and changes in the flows and systems
swirling in the deeps and in the shallows.
Is it foolish, then, to watch the stars?
And even more, could I be wasting precious time,
watching swirling flows and watching plankton
washing in and out below the sun and moon?