On my birthday

On my Birthday

There are a thousand births like mine
in that cluster of the noosphere
the rolling earth had left behind—
where birth and death joined hands
to siphon off the heavens in a moment,
in a block of space
etched by an evanescent time.

A thousand births, a hundred years,
and altogether disappeared
as father of the father of my father
will not cause extrusion of a single tear
nor anything beyond a dusty line
of history—the earth will not look back
upon the airless cubicles, and I

may smile upon the moment
when my father smiled, and let it go.
Within that crystal box, and scarce observed
there is a breath drawn in,
another sent away...
a candle life ignited, snuffed,
to float out to the stars, unseen,
where memory is like the rising mist
that one time only
may refresh the morning air.
~