What the Dead Look Like When They're Walking

What the Dead Look Like When They’re Walking

The earth spins on its axis.

The earth revolves around the sun.

The solar system spins inside a galaxy that hurdles

through blackness like a discus thrown eons ago –

No one remembers why it was thrown or who threw it.

It just spins.

He is the only one left with the park bench,

brown as crumbling oak found on the trees that surround,

cluttering, clustering, and inquisitive as family members

that are only seen on High Holy days.

Even the wind pushes them back – branches like arms

and fingers that pinch at cheeks and tousle freshly-combed hair.

He only wants there to be stillness, for all of the spinning to cease.

Knowing that everything gyrates through the dark

causes him to sit with the park bench,

as if they were allies in a war against motion,

against uncertain rotations,

against the flailing of child-arms creating a whirlwind in a backyard.

Sedentarily sublime, the man and the park bench are.

No wonder we die: all of our energy is spent fueling the Milky Way.

Just so it can turn, we give up our lives – each of us a drop of oil.

Did anyone ever ask where this galaxy is going?

Maybe there’s a way to get off at the next stop

and transfer to another galaxy, one that stays put.

That’s if this thing even stops at stations…

Maybe it forces nebulas to become hands waving goodbye outside the windows?

He imagines that he’s watching the galaxy travel through the universe,

and it’s the same as what the dead look like when they’re walking:

Partially frozen and blackly finding a footing,

surprised that there’s even fuel to burn when nothing exists inside

(Then again, stranger things have happened).

Nothing is strange enough to cause Galactic Movement to palpitate.

Nothing is strong enough to provide the man with the park bench some company.

Seventeen blackbirds circle overhead in a cacophony of wings and beaks.

One of them even has a tuft of yellow on its belly.