Wonders

The question, among our many questions, remains
the same. Not what nor who, but when. Some would like
to know in order to better prepare. Some also want to choose
the manner in which they’ll go. But the shoreline flushes
with color, and we don’t even know what other marvels
there are—in the atmosphere, in the ocean depths; the next
town, at the next table in an airport terminal, on which a father
has just dumped a small mountain of burgers, and three small
children squeal with delight. Particles collide in sheets of green
and purple in the northern skies. A gulper eel undulates in its dark
velvet suit, waiting to stretch the giant scoop of its mouth around
fish and squid. If the whole purpose of life is to be defeated by
greater and greater things, is it the same as being swallowed
whole by something that at first was flat as a ribbon and narrow
as a belt, then capacious as a balloon? It glides away, a universe
in itself: both surrender and transformation, obstacle and
triumph, a quiet ticking in the depths, a crackling in the skies.