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i caught up with old friends tonight,
anonymously of course.
they all seem so different,
when i feel like i am the same.

t.d. grew his hair out,
k.t. lost weight and worked out,
m.t. looks like he got a girlfriend
and i'm the same as i was 3 years ago.

they've all socially grown,
just like at lunch period long ago,
while i sat outside,
reading a book on how to be happy.

jesu, joy of man's desiring

i told her very explicitly
that i wanted it to be in piano,
but she insisted someone sang
those once-German lyrics.

her ancestors were from France.
which, of course I knew,
because we talked like that
when we were bored of each other.

neither of us cared about cakes,
centerpieces or card invitations.
she picked a dress she liked,
but wanted a song she loved.

so i teased, and said i'd sing it,
and she teased, and said O.K.,
and i teased, and printed the lyrics,
and made her laugh on our wedding day.

If you look up into the night sky at all the stars, you will only see about .0001 percent of all the stars in just our galaxy, the Milky Way. That is about 5,000 stars.

The Milky Way is just one of more than a hundred billion galaxies that can be seen using modern telescopes.

The nearest star to Earth, other than the sun, is Proxima Centauri (or Alpha Centauri C). This star is four light-years away. Our fastest spaceship would take ten thousand years to reach it.

The largest star, VY Canis Majoris, is over 5,000 light-years away. Its volume is a billion times that of our sun, and it would take over 650,000 years to walk a full circle on its surface.

Earth formed approximately 4.5 billion years ago. Human origins date back some 200,000 years. The whole of human existence accounts for a mere .004 percent on the world's time line.

Realizing the true insignificance we all hold in the entirety of the universe, it's really no wonder why people rely on religion to understand and give meaning to their lives.

paper airplanes

i remember standing on the back porch
and reaching my arm back as far as i could
before springing it forward with force
and sending the paper contraption into the air.

my friend and i would lean over the porch rails
and try to make it over the fence in his backyard,
but we never got halfway there,
even after trying several times.

his airplanes looked different than mine,
and i realize now there wasn't a simple reason
to explain why, when thrown at the same time,
mine would always go farther than his.

standing next to my best friend on his porch,
i could have never known then, throwing paper around,
that the distance between our airplanes
was but a precursor to our future apart.

a speck upon a speck upon a speck

a speck of dust from the banister
floats through the screen door
and into the lazy summer air.

the wind carries it down the street
and lets it go at the corner,
where it falls on an ant.

the ant is sitting on a small pebble,
infinitely bigger than the ant
compared, at least, to the dust.

in a nearby yard a child looks up,
shields his eyes,
and wonders how big the universe is.