En route, New Orleans to Paris (Planets Crossing Paths)

My friend Breton left today,
en route, New Orleans to Paris, riding
in the belly of a silver bullfrog hopping across a salty pond
(I prefer delayed destinies and the bellies of fishes).
We have been friends now, what,
going on five years long? Years full
of returned books, emptied bottles, hurried dreams.
Joey just left for Seattle, maybe two or three weeks
before Breton left. We have been friends since we were five.
He left for Seattle, all his things in his truck,
staking a claim (his “Manifest Destiny,” he calls it), to draw homes
for the humans of Washington state.
I am glad that I am happy for both of them.
My friends, we are a solar system of colorful planets,
racing through this blackest of spaces, weaving
in between stars and comets, scattered like marbles.
We are all standing firmly on this planet Earth, breathing
the air that has been breathed by billions and billions of beings
for millions of billions of years. We were all born in a decade
of decadence, disease, and drugs, all driven by Democracy.
Why else on Earth would we roam, straying far from the familiar hum of home?
A couple of years ago, around this time of year, I remember Breton leaving,
en route, New Orleans to Paris, and I was driving
on the interstate feeling like I had been mixed with the concrete
and poured there to dry. Yes, we are planets, coalescing
from the cold dust of space into warm and vibrant worlds.
Some of us take a thousand years to revolve around the Sun,
some of use take only a couple hundred days,
but each can see the twinkle of the other from across the galaxy.
And when our orbits cross paths while sailing through the stars
there is gravity and there is grace.