Ambition

They say
the universe is still expanding.
I can’t always be bothered to check.

One of these days
I’ll sit down and say,
"That’s enough.

Let someone else find
the leading edge."
I should have said it by now,

I tell myself.  Something keeps
me watching the stars, trying
to detect their flight from me.

In one second, I think I see it,
in the next, I’m sure I can’t. 
I watch us dying for plots of holy land

real or imagined, for thoughts
triggered from visions of perfection.
I think we’re all beside the point.

We’re all just human, impossibly stupid
under the blown-out dome
of space. It’s improbable that we’re here,

insignificant that I try and tell my story
when it’s exactly like every other story
ever told:  I want love, immortality,

power over my surroundings,
warmth in cold and cold in warmth.
Always on the wrong side of the moment.

If the universe is expanding,
I’m the center.  Farther away from my limits
every time the clock moves.

One of these days, I’ll say,
"enough," and it will be.  It may be enough now
that I know that.  There was never anything

to be created here that hasn’t been created already
in the rush of light and dark toward…
what’s out there, beyond what we know? Oh…

settling down to watch.