Near Eden

All my life is lived through windows;

today the glass has sprouted gazing-globes of rain

and, to watch the world, I run my vision through them both.

Bent, reflect-refracted and changed, two streetlamps, double-headed,

rest their glowing faces in the cloudy sun,

one and one and one and one,

a pair of snoring sentinels on either side

of a flagpost without a flag.

Away from this, behind a swollen fence of rain, a satellite dish,

too large, too inefficient, too there

to have been born in the last ten years,

is missing several of its wire wings stretched out like webbing

on the space between the sixteen radii reaching away

from the central arm, still calling,

still moaning in echoes for stars.

I do not know what is its metaphor;

but it is broken

and it is beautiful,

and I find that it is worth so much

in bravely being worth so little.

* * *

God, is the rain or is the glass a window?

God, when did Eden draw so near?

God, were we all sleeping?

* *

Were we sleeping?

*