I snapped the photograph with casual finger press
And captured your golden hair swirling alive in the wind
Digital ice, freezing forever this moment
Bitwise amber encoding, storing for eternity
The pixelated image of your smile,
Captured to entrance long after you’re dust
Quantum debris tumbling before a cosmic wind

suns novaed millennia ago
shine lately on my horizon
I wonder what lives lived thereon
and died in actinic flare

across a million years the voices cry,
only now impinging on my helpless ears,
too late—oh, so late—for any rescue

what sacrifices made so long ago
to warn us now of dire needs—
if you believe in omens and portents….
else they scream vainly down the ages

By way of reflection, I saw the sun
Burning upward thru water into air
How can it be that this simple puddle
Reaches down thru the solid earth
And brings me light and expanse?
To ponder slightly-out-of-phase mysteries
With reason and scientific logic
That babble about reflection and refraction
And related laws and such things
As parity or handedness…
To ponder mysteries slightly out of phase—
All I see is a bird flying
Below my feet, flying somewhere
Between me and the sun.