Communing
Jessy Emery
Aren’t we all just
creatures
leaning up towards the sun?
Are we not all just hunting
a little mid-week awe?
Scurry, now:
all this shadow, we might never
catch it again. Collect yourselves
on dead grass, witness. The sun is
blinding beautiful, if you let it. Stop.
The earth burns. Yes -
and there’s one
moon crossing the path of our sun and
there’s single-use sunglasses and
cereal boxes and colanders and
schoolbook science and a
collective giddy infectious
hope.
Are we not all just bugs after something
shared, and human, like a not-quite-
once-in-a-life-time solar event, or a
football worldcup, or reading about
droughts and feeling stomach-pit
despair.
Stop. Commune with me and
pass it round: this.
And sure, I’d look at it
directly. The sun, I mean. Wouldn’t we
all risk it, just this once, to share together
in a little blinding beauty.
And besides,
who here can say they don’t deserve
a little warmth on their cheek?