The Humped Backs of Sages

Last night Venus stayed high up in the sky,
Past ten o'clock,
A bright, white beacon of light
With Jupiter trailing close behind
In a cloudless sky
In the last weeks of spring.

I saw her as I was driving home
From a long, hard day's work,
And I thought to myself,
There's not much time
To get done what needs to get done,
To find an end to my labors.

A thought crossed my mind:
This tired old jalopy I'm driving in
Could get pulverized by an asteroid,
Or the brakes could go out, and I could smash into an oak tree.
I'd be wrapped up in a pile of twisted metal,
I'd be bleeding into the oil pan

If that happened, I thought to myself,
I'd be surprised,
And a little bit desperate to realize
That I really had made it to the end,
Slipping out of consciousness before I had time to think,
Slipping down over the western horizon,

Chasing Venus and Jupiter into the darkness,
Where morning and evening don't happen,
Just space, and something like time,
But without a merry-go-round
To keep me oriented to the cycle,
To calibrate the rhythms of this beating heart.

And I pictured an old, Chinese philosopher,
Nipping on Ng-Ka-Py,
Toking rich, thick clouds of opium,
Floating over his own horizon,
Like a morning star star at midnight,
Like full moon at noon.

Make way for the old, wise sages, I'm coming in.
Let me put down my hammers and nails.
Let me drop my hoe upon the ground
Outside the gates of Eden,
To write shorter poems, unwritten.
To breathe deeper breaths, unbreathed.