Or anyway, we’ve received them,
pulses, intentional or not, emanating
from a star three billion light years away—
maybe just directions to propel a spacecraft,
not some attempt to greet us, the hat tip sent
when life was single cell on earth.
	  Is this earthly experiment over? Was
it good while it lasted? Blood, fever, cramps, 
paralysis, pain, panic. Slavery, dismemberment,
the rack, the wheel, the stake, also crucifixion.
Darkness, always death and dying. And small
disillusionments: that Gucci handbag—
embossed, polished, still just dead calf.
	But here: maybe it’s planetary
autumn and we’re just deciduous, shedding
petals or cells in apoptosis, though what
evolves may not be us after all, one teaspoonful
of soil holding an eyedropper of stars, antidotes,
perhaps, for all that ails:  cancer and heartache,
Keith’s receding hairline, Mick’s aortic valve.

Diane K. Martin grew up in Yonkers, New York, and received a BA in English from the University of Rochester. She moved from Manhattan to San Francisco in her twenties, and has lived the last twelve years ago in western Sonoma County, California. Her work has appeared in American Poetry Review, diode, Field, Laurel Review, Narrative, and Plume, among others, and won first prize from the journal Smartish Pace. A poem received a Pushcart Special Mention. Her work was awarded second place in the Nimrod/Hardman Pablo Neruda Prize, judged by B.H. Fairchild. Her first book, Conjugated Visits, a National Poetry Series finalist, was published by Dream Horse Press. Her second collection, Hue & Cry, was published by MadHat Press.

Appears In

Cagibi Issue 24