Near-Collision

Not that I don't want to walk the streets with you.

But when I sit on a suspended turtle shell

hanged from risen arms and don't think it's magic

is the issue. It should be magic.

We walked through spider webs.

Middle-school basketballers howled

like playing wolves behind us.

A rock split and whizzed past us like a meteor:

hurled through space and time

to find us here

and still barely missed.

Thousands of light years

on the pin of a needle.

Striking sandy bits of gravel.

Clanging like dropped silverware.

The fridge is packed with eggs inside.

Vodka lives frozen but still fills glasses

topped with orange juice. They swirl

and marry happily and end

in a bathroom, anyway.

As if chocolate swirls in ice cream

didn't represent the arms of the galaxy.

Comets made of custard and fairy

dust move in high speeds and

travel in circles smaller than us.

I know at great range

there is someone else I will barely miss.

by James Croal Jackson