An asteroid came just 14,000 miles from earth.

It eyed a 15 minute window wherein it might have touched us.

What are the odds a raindrop hit the cigarette’s cherry—

that chance would douse our fire from such obscene distance?

My best friend tells me his father died, hands me a Green Can.

I’ve heard it takes 17 muscles to smile,

43 to frown.

No one’s measured how many calories are burned

holding back tears.

Trillions of dust particles

collect enough water vapor for gravity

to act upon them

as we ignite .003 ounces of butane

to light our Camel Lights.

A glacier of playsand advancing

from the turtle shell rinses away in about 1 night.

Most cargo trains carry 100 cars.

It’d be tough to estimate just how many backyards

in Norfolk feel the bang and tremble

of those containers reaching the river.

Even more difficult is counting

the shwills it takes to listen helplessly

as an old grizzly howls out his last breath

trapped on the side of his own mountain.

Our fathers may tell us they are ready for death—

that there is a measurable distance between the body and its end.

Most drivers exceed the speed limit by 10 miles an hour.

99% of movie funerals take place in the rain.

I didn’t know so I had to ask:

What are the chances the Azaleas won’t bloom in the Spring?

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Where to Look  

Route 17 traffic pumps southbound through Nelson county.

The hills an impossible green as the cars close in on the next city.

The drivers begin to hear each other’s music.

Two-thirds of these people are listening to love songs.

Up above them all, in sky too-blue for this time of year—

the early spring a result of the earth’s decision to tilt

before everyone was ready—

seven hawks hang aloft.

Four of them are already stuffed with their share of field mice.

One house has a metal roof and a barn

slowly succumbing to gravity.

A man on the roadside pinches his finger lifting the hood of his truck,

overheated. Roughly one pump’s worth of his blood is sent to the site,

if for anything – just to indicate where to look.

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Noah Renn