Listening to Bach's Mass in B Minor
Dona Nobis Pacem

Carved like a cathedral
this music of redemption

spires above the human soul
weighted with the things

of this world in a universe
scientists imagine

began with a primal tone
like the hum of an organ stop

resonating in the nothing that was
at the beginning. There is

no safety. The moth pupa suspended
in its chrysalis

the impala circled by lions
at the watering hole. How simple

to roll off the earth into the night
and dissolve among the stars.