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.