. . .
. . . .
. .
. .. . . .
The glittering towers of stars are indifferent
to the gravity that sends the sea
raging onto the sand before retreating
moodily to the unknowing horizon
where they meet in blackness.
In the face of what wild things
may be forgotten there,
utter quiet from on high. And I—
a small thing wetting his feet
in the vast lowliness of another
small thing lapping
at their cosmic feet—
will worship all these orders of magnitude,
knowing someone stands already
at the end of time, their gravity
our daily struggle, our nightly angst.
I’ve known the story since I was little,
but now find the words
themselves mysteries,
unponderable,
as the bear and cub
the hunter
and the seven sisters
find me,
their scale so far removed
that my kind of reality—
two feet, a salty breeze,
that lamplit patch of grass—
is just a probability field,
more thought than substance.
Morning glows blue,
wrapping us in the day’s local concerns.
At evening, the curtain falls again,
ageless eyes peering in
from outside of our time.
Yet someone has seen already
the limits of their reality,
the camera-flash story of the universe
a fading after image.
Someone has seen already
the quantum effects of human decisions:
the theoretically possible future
in which we grow beyond our own moment,
shocking anyone who expected us
to follow their laws of motion.