Tonight the fireflies are innumerable,
the sloping field in front of the house
dances with their presence
and as day gives up its light
the brighter planets appear
and the milky way begins to spill it stars
across the southern sky.
The grand sweep of our slice
of the universe is the evidence
that we have always had,
before telescopes 
before the theory of relativity,
that our lives are fragile and brief.

There is certain beauty 
in seeeing how little we tip the scale