I want to be fully here. Tonight I will sleep
between two streams of water, under stars that move
from what I don’t know to what I don’t know.

—Pat Schneider from “If I Were God” in “The Patience of Ordinary Things”

•••

Every night the stars shift overhead,
or, if we think like astronomers,
this blue marble we call home
revolves slowly amid a sea

of pure black, dotted with pinpoints
of stars light years away. How can
we be anywhere else but here?
This is the only here we have.

But then, sleeping as I do
between two streams of water
that surround my city like blood-
carrying veins, my dreams

turn me into a cosmic fish, riding
the blast of supernovas whose
light will not reach this planet
for eons, swimming through

the I-don’t-know-what of space
time, a finning set of particles
of recycled energy that cannot
be destroyed. I swim with

the light, into the light, until,
traveling in waves, I am light,
the only form of energy visible
to the human eye, which

you might see as I rise
to catch a breath, then dive,
fully here—wherever that
might be.