No Bigger Picture

Like wet snowflakes splattering
On the windshield driving down
A busy highway at night,

Smears and blurs of splotchy light,
Patchy galaxies splatter
The space telescope’s mirror,

And it’s eerie and pretty
And informative as hell,
But it looks as organized

As any condensation
Coalescing and twirling
Through whatever medium.

The biggest picture looks like
The smallest picture looks like
The pictures in the middle,

And there’s a lot of clumping
Together and even more
Sprawling helter-skelter out.

So that’s it, then, is it? Drive
A few billion years through night,
A few billion lives an hour,

Each one awareness or star,
And sometimes you’re looking out
At the wonderful splatter

Swirling at you, coming down,
And sometimes you’re the splatter,
Smeared mess backlit by night’s lights.