The World

Unlike the azure that protects the world,

the sky-dome’s plexiglass reflects the world.

A spherical lab experiments for eons.

Slowly, the life it bears perfects the world.

Billions of bits of sparkle whirling, whirling.

Something’s alive among these specks: the world.

A robed astronomer sees a curious glow

light up his globe as he dissects the world.

You shut the greenhouse windows one by one,

then wonder who it is that wrecks the world.

With a writ of attachment in its curved appendage,

the alien says it must annex the world.

Amphibians, mammals, reptiles, birds, fish, insects—

two by two a ship collects the world.

“Farewell,” she said, and fled to a new planet.

He shrugs when queried, “Was your ex the world?”

Tumefied into a scarlet monster:

the sun. Nobody resurrects the world.

The astronaut, though warned she’ll turn to salt,

glances back and recollects the world.

A cosmic magpie spies a blue-white marble,

then, comet-like, swoops down and pecks the world.

(Appeared in The Chimaera, Eye to the Telescope, and Autumn Sky Poetry Daily.)