Already Too Soon

The Bitterness that Bites the Sky

What brings out the bitterness that bites into the sky

So that when I roll over, stare furtively through the grass,

There are shards flung about, holes near the planets, high

Over my head a shadow, not some stray dog with his ass

On my nose, or an unquiet infant, but the empty dark

Matter everyone talks of now-a-days:

Things unknown grasp me from down below,

The biomass at the ocean’s floor, more life

Than anywhere else on earth, or the ebb and flow

Of the fungal web that binds all plants, strife

And coexistence tempered, and the slow

Bemusement of swarming starlings, the heavens rife

With their mesmeric antics between cloud and tree,

Inhabiting ditches and shivering sands, like grief

Expounded, expanded and expended for a simple fee.