floating face up, it was two in the morning, and
the Virginia sky was all there before me – all stars
splattered across darkness, all cosmos hugging orb,
all of heaven up there staring at me down here -
all of us wondering what would come next.

in one way or another, my life has been a process
of navigating from one disaster to the next, moving
from mistake to mistake, pushing my course further
and further away from the source. a series of
blunders that somehow finds me home each
and every time.

truth to be told, that’s how most of our lives
are – just moving from one spot to another
and praying that the whole thing doesn’t explode
along the way – that our mistakes aren’t great
enough to warrant punishment from the gods,
that our meager actions will go unnoticed
and unheralded just long enough that
we can escape with our pittance before the guards awake.

floating there with nothing left to lose,
my next move wasn’t clear to anyone including
myself, and especially myself. but somehow, it
has found me here to this house with this family,
to this poem and this beer and this
summer night so full of possibility and promise
that the gods are screaming in delight
as the bats sing their crazy cries from
the trees.

putting it that way, it all seems
worth it.