Photo by Bradley Penner

No direction home 
but I’m somebody’s someone somewhere 
Those things that I fear I’m without 
are often discovered within 
A trillion trillion stars 
blink into being, burn out, 
our little lives mere half-breaths 
in the iron lung of eternity— 
I find solace in my neverlastingness 
Near the off-ramp a change of fortune: 
a concrete culvert, 
shelter for this wayward hobo, 
the lullaby of traffic, 
a spider’s web my dreamcatcher 
Desolation feels truer than false hope 
but I pray nonetheless: 
That the cold becomes my blanket, 
that uncertainty acts as my guide. 
That the trillion trillion stars 
share their incandescence 
For as Rumi wrote 
the wound is where the light enters 

Tim Rudolph is a poet living in Santa Cruz, CA.