I Streaked So Very Briefly

I grew as clean and polished as the perfect desert sandstone

I spun peacefully in an eddy though strong currents tossed all around me

I tumbled with the words from your lips as you mumbled a goodbye

I orbited the earth just fast enough to remain perpetually in the light of dawn

I was lofted somewhere far away, into the golden West upon the prevailing winds

I scattered with the leaves during a few crisp autumns long, long ago

I faded into one or more of those amazing painted sunsets

I was bent by gravity around celestial bodies along with other ancient photons

I rolled up on the beach with many a perfect swell

I twirled slowly to the ground with the fragile apple blossoms

I streaked briefly across the summer sky with a shooting star

I crashed through many canyons in roaring youthful streams

I refracted from the peak along with a billion ice crystals

I ground out the valley, nosed along by a patient glacier

I bathed the room with a streak of brief and pale moonlight

I rose in the air as a life-giving mist after plunging down the gaping cataract

I was taken up by the slanting sunshine and fell again as a gentle rain

I flourished in the ancient forests and then was compressed into a coal seam

I rained slowly down with other fine detritus from the far off surface of the sea

I fell with the million snowflakes as we silently covered the vast boreal forest

I welled up with vital nutrients in the icy water just off the pacific coast

I left questions carved in random patterns upon many jumbled boulders

I faded away in proportion to the increasing heat and the longer droughts

I played my subtle variations on a theme brought to life by a tiny creek

I streaked briefly full of avian color in the blue above a clearing rain forest canopy

I flashed a shining migrating side, momentarily breaking the surface of that great river

I helped form those fantastic images that filled the skies among the holy clouds

I went down in muddy sediment leaving behind baffling, petrified remains

I sighed with the wind in the big trees standing arms akimbo for a thousand years

I fused my atoms with all the others at the center of many suns

I formed mystic patterns of electromagnetic radiation they called the aurora borealis

I raced across the ocean with a pod of warm-blooded giant bluefin tuna

I bathed peacefully in the light of a billion healing springtimes

I disappeared across the event horizon of that black hole at the center of our Milky Way

I spun with the earth about the sun around the galaxy tracing far across but one universe

I left my carcass to the wolves and crows, and my soul to father sun