Although affliction cometh not forth of the dust,
neither doth trouble spring out of the ground;
yet man is born unto trouble,
as the sparks fly upward.

Job 5:6-7 (KJV)

Humped over my books at night, reason will not help me,
nor desire, so I take my groundless grief into the darkness

where fireflies escape like sparks soundlessly from a crease
between the shadows of trees and my moon lighted lawn.

Light from the lamp on my desk, a floor above where I stand,
spills wasted to the ground and I regret the yellow cast it leaves

on the grass in need of rain, onto the thin skin of earth
that does not, I am told, hold the First Cause of affliction.

I listen again, being born unto trouble, scheming of ways
to explain the morality of God, and strain against the silence

of blank space between star-sparks echoing light
where I hope against evidence of tomorrow’s dust.