Or With Virtue, As You Please

Earth’s just the largest rock

We know of for sure, say

Astronomers. Giant

Gas planets may have cores,

But we’re not certain they’re

Rocky. Other systems

Detected as wobbly

Variations of light

May hold bigger rocks, too,

And of course, we know there

Are lots of smaller rocks,

Including Earth’s own moon.

But Earth’s the biggest one,

So far. So there. Now what?

Prose poet Baudelaire,

Who drank too much, declared,

One should get and stay drunk,

Should always remain drunk,

If one wanted to slip

Time’s backbreaking burden,

Time’s crushing slavery,

But he hedged this a bit

By suggesting different

Kinds of drunks one could be—

With wine, with poetry,

Or with virtue. Your call,

He added, as if choice

Could ever be involved

For the drunken poet

Who wrote Les Fleurs du Mal.

But let’s consider it—

Certainly there are those

Who insist that virtue

Can provide the escape

Baudelaire claimed requires

Resolute drunkenness,

And, just as certainly,

The virtue-besotted

Sometimes seem unhappy,

Even self-destructive

As ordinary drunks,

Not to say sad poets.

But Earth’s the largest rock

We know of in our night,

And the virtuholics

We know of all remain

Dependent on this one

Rock, martyred to one sun.

Put those two together—

Virtue on a bender,

And a dense chunk of rock

Spinning virtue tethered.

Something snaps. Sobers up.

Where is this? How’d we? What?