Everything Ends

Everything Ends | Zocalo Public Square • Arizona State University • Smithsonian

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but so what. In the sultry nights of August, I’ll unravel –
wanna join me? We can pant ourselves pantless,

share a double brushfire on the raucous. Together
we can close the book on the Uncertainty Principle,

load up, unwaning, at Wingstop, discuss the sorrow
of burned beaks. Free the crows, you say, and I raise

a toast to a small, uninhabited island, a boisterous whale,
a purity stone, a planet without smoke. Because pleasure

counts big time. Because days spent in a tender mess
are unrecoverable. Naked and floodlit, cocooned

in the opposite of random, we remind ourselves
of the importance of seaweed and seasons,

of each and every bacteria, how we’re more
microbe than human. If everything ends,

why are you sharpening your sorrow,
running to catch the discomfort.

Martha Silano is the author of five books of poetry, most recently Gravity Assist (Saturnalia Books, 2019). She teaches at Bellevue College.

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