Jane Doe

Jane Doe


Where black holes
loom like leeches
sucking their own blood,
a universe,
companionless
as a bag lady,
teems with stars so large
and far apart
their light shines
for billions of years
after they’ve died.


Somewhere out there,
on an earth
where every
living thing
trembles at the end
of a lit fuse,
on a cooling earth
warmed for a while
by a dying sun
and thus precious
beyond measure,


the bag lady,
toting her cargo
of raw nerves
and groping
for a remnant
of her name,
navigates the night,
her cart’s shrieking wheels
fading like the screams
of hawks, echoing
in a canyon.


Larry D. Thomas

Posted over on Radiant Turnstile