On a Clear Night, in Sight of the Bridge of Souls

In a world where it all breaks and goes,
It’s strange that so much works at all. Strange

That words work, that all things can be named
By a bridge from each thing to the next,

Such as that term, bridge, or milk or bone
Or stream or road or stars, for the stars

That cloud your clear nights. Strange you can think
Of such things as names, strange you can breathe

And move and wave your limbs and seek out
Things to eat that breathe and move and wave

Or hide in the dirt and store up food
For dry days or cold days in their roots.

Strange that this hunk of hurled, crunched, scarred rock,
Which tilts and rolls and slows but still spins,

Is smooth and wet and full of such lives
That work so hard to be lives to eat

Lives to grow more lives to spit out lives
In the face of breaks and loss and death,

Strange lives like yours that make up such names
As strange, as us, linked arcs through the dark.