Why Leaves Mimic the Far-Off Sun
When the silent fall asks them to
The thing about Enlightenment is you get filled with Light! I used to not know this. It’s a bit scary. Perhaps that’s why people avoid it.
Perhaps there are better things to do than notice what leaves are up to when they think we’re not watching. Maybe, but I’m not so sure. I also heard two owls talking about us just last night. I listened. They laughed at all of us in our warm quiet houses, while they concentrated on unsuspecting mice in the cold jarring darkness, swooping and grasping them, with murder and hot bloody dinner in mind.
That’s how it works, you know,
When no one’s watching.
When the night is deep, and sleep
is fleeting,
dreams are vast,
And the Earth spins in space,
quietly,
forgetting that trouble has happened,
and that killer asteroids
silently fall,
thinking we’re all mice, too,
Very large mice, of course.
Asteroids are not concerned with the damage they do,
And neither is my ex-girlfriend, who called me the other day.
“John, you’ve changed your number again!”
“How did you find me?”
“It wasn’t that hard. You’re not very bright, you know.”
“What do you want?”
“I’m not calling for me. The Aliens have found us.”
“You, too? That’s why I disappeared, to protect you from these “friends” of mine. What did they want?”
“Your number. I gave it to them.”
“Why?”
“I don’t know. They were kind of cute.”
Dear Reader, please remember that not all Aliens are bad, not all are even green.
Not much is what it seems.
Lewis Carroll asked me to tell you that.
The Aliens called me, shortly thereafter.
My phone got hot in my hands. I sweated,
profusely, as they say.
“Hello?”
“We’re wondering what you’re up to this weekend?”
“Not much that I want you to know about. How are you guys? I haven’t heard from you in awhile.”
“Be there at 9. You know the place.”
“Bye, then.”
“Ciao, Johnny.”
I called my girlfriend back, to complain loudly, but she didn’t answer. I heard an owl. Close by, it seemed.
Do you even know how bright spaceships are? Not ours, of course. They’re mundane, spewing flames and smoke, just to get Captain Kirk so high
That he can cry,
And he did, telling ‘ol Bezos, when he got back, how thin and fragile our little strip of blue is, and how the vast night darkness is so close. (He actually did.)
What darkness are you scared of? What coffee didn’t you drink today?
Hold your cup steady, friends! The Earth is spinning, to the east, at a thousand miles an hour! We just don’t care or appear to notice it.
Nether do asteroids or disappearing dinosaurs,
Or words. (Usually)
Or old girlfriends, boyfriends, parents, schools, too,
recorded messages in the night,
questions that call you
and never will fight,
sitting so patiently,
just out of sight.
Hang on, guys!
Don’t get that tight.
Don’t give up.
Don’t get caught
when laughing long shadows come.
Don’t lose hope,
And don’t go numb!
Don’t ask me why I write,
and spin my two thumbs.
I talked to Lewis Carroll,
even though the guy’s dead.
He told me the Aliens
deflected a big asteroid,
so it won’t hit our heads.
“They really do love us, you know,” he assured me.
“More than my old girlfriend still does?” I asked.
“More than your mother, John,
More than your dad.
More than Aunt Heidi,
who always looked sad.”
Two owls called me from the cold dark night.
I flew with them, off to the West,
to Grand Canyon’s silence,
And that is my test.
_______________________
© “John” Lesly Levin 2021
