The human hand
has six striking surfaces.
That is good practical information
to have when you consider
that most of the mystery
left in the universe is microscopic
and yet at the same time, there are still
many immense things still left hidden to us.
Pyramids deep in the Amazon jungle.
Leviathans that lurk along the ocean floor.
Unexplored midnights and that corner
of the soul everyone avoids. I regret
that pollution sometimes makes sunsets
prettier. I regret that the mind sometimes
becomes a witness for the prosecution.
It sure didn’t seem like it, but that time
when I was little and that wasp got under
my shirt and stung me right over the heart
was a great lesson. So was that time
rowing that rowboat and that weird current
just kept bringing us right back to where
we started. You know, everyone
who has ever told me they knew
a shortcut thought they were smarter
than me.
Patrick Meeds lives in Syracuse, NY and studies writing at the Syracuse YMCA’s Downtown Writer’s Center. He has been previously published in Stone Canoe literary journal, the New Ohio Review, Tupelo Quarterly, the Atticus Review, Whiskey Island, Guernica, The Main Street Rag, and Nine Mile Review among others.