The photon,
returning to the sun
after having been reflected
off the dark spot on the tip of the hair
on the end of the tail of the tiger,
and reflected at just the right angle,
and reflected at just the right time,
passed another in the vast blackness,
and stopped, surprised, in delight.
What will happen to me, asked the other.
What is out there?
Why have I been cast into this void?
Am I not loved?
You will see beauty,
said the one that returned,
and you will see sadness.
You will see a hair on the end of the tail of a tiger,
and bouncing from it you will become like me,
being asked, knowing little,
and answering in clichés.
But the other,
traveling straight, losing track,
bounces off a hair on your head
and dreams of it for all eternity
on its long way to the stars.
And the one that returned,
lost in the heat and lost in the light,
deep within nuclear fire,
dreams of it, too.