Musings and Observations

This fire - where was it, 
before the match was lit?
There, in the cold and dark, 
waiting to be a spark.

I watched a million motes of dust
meander through a slanting beam of sunlight,
and I thought, "This must be 
how our stars and planets seem,
from what, to us, is outer space;
and on these flecks, half-inches are perceived 
by some dust-atom race 
as distances from star to star."

I hear at night a freight train's far-off thunder
and whistlewail of warning 
as it nears a crossing three towns distant;
and I wonder at how such sounds can span 
both miles and years.