I search the sky for what is beyond the sky.
What physicists say is 95% dark matter.
Good for them. Good also for the 5% that 

is light matter, the pileated woodpecker
piercing black locust bark, the warblers
migrating high above who know the world 

is nothing without wings. Good for the grebes
crossing this mad current, persistent in their
paddling, as we persist in our belief that 

you go against the river or with it, but never
between. Good for the osprey that wants
the fish more than the splash. For the vultures 

who love this heat, who are magnificent in
their ugliness, their wings permanent shadows
swooping overhead. Good for the saplings 

twisted from last year’s storms, that look like
question marks, that look like answers as they
keep signaling each other, a slow moving 

current forever charging uphill. Here we
come, they say. Because what does one day
of light matter to something that lives five 

hundred years? Everything. It’s everything.