To think there is such a thing
as a good day
is to neglect the sun’s eternal indifference
to the clouds and fog
that bottle it up invisible
and block its rays
from reaching our foreheads. What kind
of special joy
does a ball of gas receive
from being seen, flaring for an audience,
burning off frosts, keeping us warm?
To think the sun shares our vanity,
bemoans stormy weather, gets stir-crazy in winter
and lives for the stage.
To think it soaks up our applause and appreciation
when it appears after absence in unapologetic brightness.
To think of the sun
as a closet candaulist
getting cheap thrills from abetting drought
or our lusting after its preening exhibition of rays.
To think the sun resents the moon’s shift
over our heads, our rotations,
our curvature. To think
it fancies bronzed bodies, conspires against ozone,
cares if its ultraviolet jokes
end in punch lines of melanoma.
To think the sun
has any skin in our game at all.
To think our solar system is libertine,
sweltering and frigid depending on anything more
than distance and finite quantities of fusion.
To think this way is folly,
scavenging within the mass defect. But
to think otherwise is ruin.
Jake Onyett is a U.S. Navy veteran who was born in Canada, raised in the United States and lives in Italy. His poetry appears/will appear in Abstract, Glassworks, Painted Bride Quarterly, Pangyrus, The Rumpus and elsewhere. He is an MFA candidate at NYU.