Thirty
Pitching the final inning with any arm at all
Land like a clayform and the creationists selling children the story of dinosaurs on a boat in a flood right next to the imprints of their feet in 140 million year old mud
The measurement of the obelisk that cratered here might match
One step toward home and the lantern cracked and seeping gas as the birds go quiet underground
They pulled the head out first the hands out after the tie, the body whole after the pressed rock could be burned
Whoever counted the pitches from up there - one loud squeak against the sun and I am not living without you the rest of the galaxy seemed to whisper
The gods in their planet homes, the writer’s we’ve admired turning their bones into whatever might press
And there were more jokes to not understand, more cigarettes to stare at glowing in the dark, more red stone quarried
The quartet began to singe, being fair skinned, in the bright day
The drunks began to wind their tongues round the notes of their bottles
The bodies of the largest dinosaurs floated away from the flowing water’s edge and deposited in the deeper silt there
Apparently the boat apparently the story the creationist kids read apparently the god folded into the man’s round head was one that left most everything to die and we take after that
One last armless swing and the air goes quiet as the ball hits the mit and the game is called some sequence of events that will be forgotten and the memory of humankind will raise its dollar bill to useless paper lanterns glowing against another planets hands and lamp skating
The robot on television told an anecdote about pachyderms that grew up in the circus
One memory gets planted and the stake keeps the being edged by chain to the place the stake meets the ground
We can believe such wonderful things about the work this world has done without us








