Everything’s Yoked by Faint Likenesses Together

Imagine how you’d dread the Perseids
If every shooting star inflamed some pain,
If every year you knew those days would come
When random needles would shoot clear through you.

We say this because it’s strange how likeness
Can illuminate, can make seeming sense
While being utterly irrelevant.
Every orbit, the bead of our whole world
Swings through the bits of dust sprayed by a comet
Shedding particles in the solar wind.
For a number of days those dust specks burn.
Humans celebrate them on moonless nights,
But of course they burn through in daylight, too.

If the planet were like some of its lives
It could learn to dread needle intervals.
But that comparison doesn’t make sense.