F=ma

Saturnian equinox, Cassini mission photo, 2009. The next Saturn equinox will be in 2025.

A massless particle

passes through the void

with no resistance.

As if you could escape.


This happens because nothing

can be still,

and because, for the lonely,

direction is meaningless.


What if every moment

is a best guess ––

the baffling way two particles

can become entangled

so that they appear to communicate

instantaneously?


I try "instantly"

then "forever."


Ask what it means

to pass through the void.

—a cento created from the 20 physics-inspired poems of Rae Armantrout's chapbook "Entanglements”

Everything

Everything reminds me of you

the way you

remind me of everything


i'm not

what I should've been


could've

given to silences


deep with duende

windblown among books


in sunsets

mysterious and true


the way nothing

is quite


and everything

bears repeating.

—an adaption to self-relevance of a Rae Armantrout poem by the same title

This Ecstatic Apprehension of Existence

Here is the front, closing in over the hill.

Here is the wind on my cheek with its gasp and its chill.


Where is the peace i had sought? Where is the why?

Is that my own mind i can see when i look at the sky?

—Title from a novel by Julien Gracq

Due East

Decaffeinated coffee in a china cup

Warms my hand at sunrise

Looking out the kitchen window

With the dog against my thigh,

Both of us waiting quietly

In the vernal equinox.


Catherine of Sienna said so

In the Fourteenth Century,

Dictating in a state of ecstasy,

Truth being what we make of it ––

All the way to heaven

Is heaven.

The Earth Sound

Meteor of the Eta Aquarid Shower, May, 2016. Photo by Darla Young

Ease us back down into the moment,

Ease of the moment without human sound,

Ease of the air over water and trees,

Sound of the land and the sound of the seas,

Sound of the seas and the hum in our ears,

Sound of the earth in our moment of ease.

Territorial

The red-wing in the blighted ash

drops his tail, spreads his wings,

sings two notes, and waits,

showing off his shoulders,

for a mate, airborne somewhere

over Maryland, snow still here

on shaded, wooded slopes

in this peculiar scenery of March,

me in a thrift chair on dead grass,

him in the ash, guarding our territories,

him against rivals, me against madness.

Who will help me?

What is joy?

This day. This life.

This song. This empty air.

This season. This passing season.

Dayfall, Nightbreak

Sunrise with dog

Deep in the night tide I know

the cellophane crushed in my lungs is pneumonia,

but when the silver winter sun

clears the woods, instead I know

it's just a common cold,

and soon enough I'll write for you

another poem to read by firelight,

until that dropping embered orb

sinks once more behind the barn,

 and with a burning in my chest I know

I'll never see you again.

Second Sight

   

A shadow and a shade

                    are states of mind,

Move too fast to look,

                    we're running blind.

Cold Morning

  

Overnight

the overcast

has come to ground,

                    or so it seems,

as we await

the brighter days,

                    the sweeter dreams.

Firsts

Motionless and staring.

First you were the sky,

And everything else was the sea.


The wind moved in the trees,

And the ground murmured.


A name and everything

It singed were the same.


And then there was no choice,

And then there was no sense.


First you were a lava flow,

And everything else was the sea.