Bright Things

It must be true; that only the moon and the stars know –

– as they hang above the heads of men pressing their work into the soil –

– the blind testing the ground’s temperature with passionless canes –

– the lonely pulling their shadows onto themselves like coats at dawn –

– the elderly and unexamined making-out with their palely crinkled hands –

– the newborn calf wide-eyed and inquisitive, not knowing the farmer will arrive to shoot its two heads tomorrow –

– the young kid whose only friend is a plastic gun, because kids his age are never drawn to him, and people his senior consider him happily estranged –

– it must be true, but strangely feels so, so wrong –

– that it’s the brightness in things that causes them to last.