IN THIS VAST GALAXY

in this huge and bustling city,
you were given only a speck of time
in which to love--
in your aborted life, sister, brother,
father, mother, daughter, son,
you slowly burgeoned and sprouted
from your chrysalis to die too soon,
sweet trace of nectar on your lips,

as all of us,
delicate as butterflies,
gone to soon,
reigning too briefly to understand our power,
or our beauty
our scepter stilled, pen silenced,
just as we're fully bloomed.