Cosmos
by Matthew Dwight Moore
I must be eccentric
because when I found out it was Carl Sagan’s birthday,
I went to the library
to check out the DVD of Cosmos.
He said the library was the DNA of civilization
and represented the collective effort
of humanity.
On the way, I thought about
his brain cancer,
my father dying,
and putting my dog to sleep.
The universe seems so cold and lonely.
Things are so distant in the universe— galaxies billions
and billions of light years from each other.
When I got there
I found out it had just been checked out
by someone else.
About the Author
Matthew Dwight Moore’s writing has been previously published in Afterimage: The Journal of Media Arts and Cultural Criticism (University of California Press), In Media Res, Westside News, and Digital Commons. He is associate professor of humanities at Roberts Wesleyan College in Rochester, New York.