The Solipsistic Planet

Understandable, forgivable,

Even, given how lonely it feels,

Spinning in remote isolation

Without one conversational world

Having ever reached out to greet it.

In reasonable moments, it knows

It is only one speck in the night,

One faint fleck of reflected starlight,

But then it falls back to muttering

And navel-gazing, calling itself

The world, as if it weren’t comical

To imagine a single planet,

Not even a star or a dust cloud

Among the millions of galaxies,

As the whole, wide world. And yet it does,

And worries, and sulks about the end

Of the world, as if there were only

The one and the same, sole and insane.