We Must Consider the Worth of a Thought

​We must consider the worth of a thought,
A moon beneath the rings of Saturn,
A plasma looping of the sun,
Colors of the primal pattern,

Pillars of light, green curtains,
Dances with Japanese fans,
A sky of fireflies, a mind
Of architecture, lines and plans,

The dancers shuffle from the stage,
The mechanical traffic light
In the village at midnight turns red, turns green, 
The fireflies are out of sight,

The force to infuse the air,
The trees, the street, the balconies,
To electrify, to fill the skin
With the tapping of timpanies

But how shameful the air when
The broad wind scuttles, chopped
By wind farms, finds itself lost
On Second Avenue. The dropped

Note papers rise, a person reads:
“These seat belts are too tight,
There are too many traffic lights,
This is the dawning of the satellite,

“Woe, he who tells the wood, 
Awaken! Arise, you mute stone.
Will it teach? It is overlaid
In gold and silver, of its own,

“It has no breath.” But then
The cyclone churns, the solar storm,
The stinging gamma rays, the breached
Van Allen belt, the raging swarm

Of cosmic rays, the thoughts that spin
Apart, that end up on an exoplanet,
Stranded on an asteroid, burning
In a comet’s hair. The granite

Of Bear Mountain bears the soil,
The crowberries, the dragonflies
That zip their invisible lines of prose
To swirl to hover in the skies.