Small Universe

There were eighty-eight
glistening constellations
 

draping a night sky
across my back porch
 

with eighty-eight spiders
flaunting fat bottoms
 

and midges, gnats, flies, all
streaming into black holes:
 

just a slight hint of the tragic
sense of life in all its glory
 

then the eternal silence round
the back of the eighty-eight
 

constellations terrified me a little
and had me scuttling back indoors.
             
                 ………