Lost in Space

'If you look hard in that bed,
You'll see some idle strands of hair, '

She smiled drily then, for

I said this more in jest,

Or as a foolish dare.

We were deep in talk,

About endings and thus, this

Being a walk to universe end,

Was an obscure speculation -

Ramblings on star death,

Plotting the final photon,

The kind of thing where,

You have to catch your breath

For fear you lose your mind.

My clumsy segue was the kind

That often distracted me,

Equating that final heat death

With another demise,

That being mine,

And the limp heredity

Discarded in the grass

A paling memento mori, for

As the fleeing cosmos goes,

All should be fine,

All should be well,

Given enough space and time.

On a half-distant line,

the dull gamelan of

A forty-truck train,

Brings me back to now,

With its sharp disquiet,

Again.