Straight Up

If you were to take it into your mind to lay on your back in the snow in the open area in the park at the end of my street in the dark and look straight up into the streetlight that supplies the neighbourhood kids with enough light to play in the park year 'round even long after the sun goes down, then chances are you would see what I saw here - the missile path of the steel pole that leads to the sodium-arc street light that bursts into illumination like some far off gas giant of a star going supernova in a far away galaxy that won't be seen by human eyes for a few billionyears while its avatar here on earth warmly illuminates the skeletal remains of an ancient Russian poplar tree, one of the few left in the neighbourhood after the apocolyptic pre-winter winds that nearly delimbed the entire population of Russian immigrants in my neighbourhood; and all the while you're laying in the snow and beaming with pride because, despite your Sesame Street indoctrination and sound-bite world that precludes any commitment to concentrated focus on the matters at hand, that you have just read a sentence that has 206 words in it. Hey, James Joyce! Bite me.