As the one country after another is pulled down
1st into civil war and then into the growing mess
of one regional war after another while somehow
I’m actually getting better I’m aging regaining my

Health coming out of the pandemic survival mode
of this grim, desperate scramble of homeless space
just to live suddenly seeing the entirety of all space
everywhere all one thing complete total a mystery

I explain out on the hot asphalt that now rings the
common , oh, what happened to that cold empty
thing, the universe, when, finally, we saw past the
shining veil of our own barred spiral swirl galaxy

All the other billions of spinning galaxies churning
in their many, many billions of billions bright stars
all contained by what we do not know and still may
never know especially if we keep on going like we

Now are this excruciating battle with life its very self
envelope of only known Eden, lifeboat in cosmic sea.

 

James Van Looy has been a fixture in Boston’s poetry venues since the 1970s. He is a member of Cosmic Spelunker Theater and has run poetry workshops for Boston area homeless people at Pine Street Inn and St. Francis House since 1992. Van Looy leads the Labyrinth Creative Movement Workshop, which his Labyrinth titled poems are based on. His work appears weekly in Oddball Magazine.