SAILING WITH THE PLEIADES

Even as I jog the lanes of New Haven,
speeds up to three one-thousandths
a kilometer a second, saying hi there!
to the flower seller, the one-armed peddler, 
and caretaker Bill of the Grove Street Cemetery — 

Earth twirls me on its hip, west to east, 
gyrating through seasons, and Sun pilots
its argosy of planets, asteroids around 
the Milky Way — two hundred fifty million years
to make one tour — while our dear little galaxy

sails on: silent, ghostly, accelerating
in free fall toward that terrible crystal: 
God. 
God?  Who created Himself from Nothing?

But He's running away from us,  
the speed of light;
ahhh let Him go, trouble from the start, 
or where was He when we needed Him most?

And another thing:
the way a tide in Hokkaido cancels
a wave on Cape Cod,
consider that I am alone this night,
running the lanes of the graveyard,
abandoned at the speed of thought,
eyes shut tight, not moving at all.