Cosmic Dust Perpetual
by Odin Roark

A child’s laughter,
A parent’s scorn,
An orangutan’s puzzled gaze,
Vibration’s engagement.

Cotton candy’s spin of pleasure,
Stringed balloons freely bobbing above clutched fingers,
Excited hands pitching desired morsels across the moat,
Youth’s nourishing of the game.

Playing fields vary,
And far below,
Amidst the park grasses of no-man’s land,
An ant pauses with heavy load,
A glance at the human species left,
Noisy.
An awareness of past shadows floating,
Quiet.

Could it be…

Earth’s ever small colonists—
Perplexed at the giants’ self-destruction—
View life as an honorarium,
Satisfied to be an evolutionary element
Mixed in a universal formula,
Where all existence knows only continuum?

And what if…

Such miniscule propensity understands
Man spends far too much of precious life
Pointing restless fingers,
Raising clenched fists,
While leaving its consumptive appetite
Groping for satiation?

Might we ever learn…

Fear prematurely shortens breath’s longevity,
While our simple ancestral lineage,
The rat
Cockroach
And ant
Peering out from miniature yesterdays of today,
Continue their simple vigil,
Instinctively pondering the wisdom of future Goliaths?

Shrugging…

The ant continues to carry
Crumbs as daily celebration,
Conserving and sharing such grateful affluence,
While Time’s moment by moment eternity
Makes ready its next iteration.

Such is the continuing history of
Cosmic dust perpetual.