Wednesday morning, early and the sun has yet to rise.  It’s winter after all.

Doubting that sleep would return at 5AM, after dressing and the routine bowl of cheerios, here I am at Starbucks.  This morning I anticipate traveling for a last time to my friend Al Lykin’s home.  Al died subsequent to a brief stay at Good Shepherd Hospital.  I was in the room when Al’s flame extinguished, a manner of speaking which he would approve, as Al was Buddhist in outlook.  “Everything that lives dies” is a Buddhist principle Al knew well.  His manner of life embraced risk with joy, with wild abandon.  I miss Al.  Surely I received but a few of the stories that he had to tell.

Al would love this poem.  I think that every life is a poem.  Composition of the lines, fall to those who loved them, who remain.

This Beautiful Planet

Dorothea Lasky

Please tell me that I was a good child
And that I did everything right
And that the atmosphere was exactly certain
I want you to love me
In ways that you never have
So that I become a forgotten world
With rainbow sunrises over dark green trees
And the cooling of the day
Becomes normal again
We will sit and watch the body of water
That we once called a sort of death
You know even in my dreams
You say I’ll never get it right
This is not a dream
We are burning here with no escape
But no matter how many times
They talk about the moon
It does not take a poet
To know that the moon
Is still only an illusion
Only an illusion
The moon calls out to all of us
Come back, it says
But we don’t hear it
Already on our way
To somewhere

“I’ve long been obsessed with the idea that our human experience is very unimportant when taken in the context of the endless magnitude of the universe. It’s both a comforting and terrifying reality. In terms of this poem, this reality is manifest in my current fear for our planet. Climate change dominates my thoughts most days. In many ways, this poem is a narration of this particular sort of existential anxiety. It is only through love and care of others that we can still have hope for our beautiful planet. I wish everyone on the planet reading this poem so much love.”

—Dorothea Lasky

Dorothea Lasky is the author of seven collections of poetry and prose, most recently Animal (Wave Books, 2019). She is an associate professor of poetry at Columbia University and lives in New York City.

*Salman Rushdie