shriven

verb:
to have received the confession of; to have imposed penance on; to have granted absolution to

at the blackboard,
fermi, asking, if there are,

on any human scale,
an infinite number of suns in the sky,

and conceivably, therefore,
an arbitrarily frequent occurrence of life,

and thus, on any human scale, an abundance
of an only marginally rarer phenomenon,

sentience, in which
a species deconstructs its body and soul

syntactically, reaching
in to itself and out to the heavens for meaning,

why, then,
is humanity yet alone?

the classroom blank,
the blackboard silent in answer.

11 months ago