here's to the roundness
the seeds like encrusted jewels
the empty center space
reserved for contemplation

here's to the asiago, the onion, 
the garlic, the sun-dried tomato,
the raisins, the cinnamon,
and reluctantly the blueberries

and finally here's to the butter
fresh and salted to perfection
that melts like morning dew
into my toasted bagel
                        

yes, think jacob, think esau
hungry as hell, and fainting
for want of food, at the point
of death as the story goes. 

myself, i sense hyperbole
though i've been hungry too,
more than once. still—
about to die — honestly?
i think not.

but here's the thing—
my wife makes a red lentil soup
with cauliflower and curry
an aroma of unspoken holiness
that would entice pretty much

anyone with a birthright
to consider laying it on the table
in exchange for a bowl, a spoon
some hearty bread, and of course,
a mess of fresh red pottage

hyperbole you say? taste it 
and tell me i'm wrong.
                        

before lipperhey was one-upped
before galileo pointed his tube
set with lenses at the heavens
before hubble and webb

there were already too many
stars to possibly count
as we lay beneath a summer sky
pointing out constellations

arguing over the dippers
and the north star as though
anything we knew was enough
to stand as truth

now modern telescopes
flying madly through space
tell us that for every point
of light seen by our finite eyes

there are galaxies unnumbered
infinity squared and cubed
nebulae who were gone millennia
before we ever saw their light

it stretches imagination
challenges perception of time
of permanence, of distance and asks
what will we do with them

or they with us. was it not enough 
to be amazed at a meteor's brief
exuberant burning in the night
and already a surfeit of starlight?