Cosmology

May 4, 2023

UPWARD

The young child stares up into the sky
and sees in the infinite space
countless worlds take form and then die.

On the mesa coyotes cry
seeing gods in what men deface
the young child stares up into the sky

hears his ancestors’ mournful reply
in an atom’s interstitial space
countless worlds take form and then die.

Inside he sees his parents embrace
he would never think to ask them why
the young child stares up into the sky

At the edge of the sun, great planes fly
drop their payloads, return to their base
countless worlds take form and then die.

Tanks and Humvees simply mystify
as young soldiers, brothers wave goodbye
the young child stares up into the sky
countless worlds take form and then die.

First Appeared in The Globe Review, Issue 2, April 2023
https://heyzine.com/flip-book/4f02f9b80a.html

April 2, 2023

NOMENCLATURE

We really need to stop
naming new plant varieties
and comets after the people
who first discovered them.
Think about it for a moment –
they didn’t invent anything,
they just saw what was already there.
So let’s agree on a new rule
shall we, plant varieties will
henceforth be named after
rock bands with at least
one gold record, and comets
after random lines from
either Hamlet or Macbeth
but the person discovering
the comet gets to choose from which.

March 8, 2023

THE OLD ROCKER

I reached the point in life
where I know the Byrds were right,
I was so much older then,
I’m younger than that now, and
for good measure Jethro Tull knew
I was too old to rock ‘n’ roll
but far too young to die.
And yet I am still inchoate,
a product of the Big Bang, stellar
dust accreted temporarily.
And the Webb Space Telescope
has given me the next best thing
to immortality, for when the time comes
and I hope it isn’t all that soon,
when my body is cremated, that
momentary heat signature will
be seen in some planet in a galaxy
at the edge of the universe
some 13 billion years later,
long after my ashes will have
returned to the cosmos,
from where I came.

March 7, 2023

PHONE HOME?

Perhaps we spend too much
time wondering if there are
aliens of the ET sort among us.

Let’a face it, if they are
advanced enough to get here,
they ought to be able to fit in
without standing out, so
sorry Hollywood, it may make
for an exciting movie but
it just isn’t all that likely.

And before you remind me
of UFO sightings, just because
you see a bus stop in the dark
of night, you can’t be certain
anyone got off or on, can you?

March 1, 2023

TIDY

It was simple by definition
a neat orderly universe, but then
a Big Bang and all of the planning
went out in a monumental flash.

He could easily have corrected it
a simple thought would have
done the trick, but He made the rules
so He had no choice but to abide by them.

It was truly a godly mess, He
would be the first to admit it
had there been anyone to whom
He might admit it, but that lot

on Olympus were a poor joke,
and had long since ceased
to serve any purpose at all
save taking up library space.

So things were banged about, things
blew up spectacularly, things
disappeared entirely, and he
was left to practice meditation.

February 24, 2023

SETI

Perhaps we spend too much
time wondering if there are
aliens of the ET sort among us.

Let’s face it, if they are
advanced enough to get here,
they ought to be able to fit in
without standing out, so
sorry Hollywood, it may make
for an exciting movie but
it just isn’t all that likely.

And before you remind me
of UFO sightings, just because
you see a bus stop in the dark
of night, you can’t be certain
anyone got off or on, can you?

December 23, 2022

PAUSE

The world ended yesterday
just as predicted, and then
restarted, and nothing at all
seemed to change yet
everything was slightly
different, a little askew.

I noticed it, although no one
around me detected it,
went about their day
as though nothing happened.

The preachers didn’t foresee
it coming, hadn’t predicted it,
glad when the restart did not
signal the end of days, for they
were no longer certain where
they would spend eternity.

I had no such expectations
and the moment duly noted, I
went about my day normally

December 17, 2022

BENT ARROW

He would never understand how time developed a flexibility that defied the laws of physics. An hour, a minute, a second, they were all standard measures. Each the same as every other. Yet lately they had changed, flexed. For the most part they had gotten shorter, shrunken. He knew that wasn’t possible until he remembered Einstein’s famous quote.* But perhaps that Einsteinian law applied only to those of a certain growing age, like his.

*Put your hand on a hot stove for a minute and it seems like an hour. Sit with a pretty girl for an hour, and it seems like a minute.

October 13, 2022

A SEPTEMBER SKY

Lie back, I said to her,
just stare up that way
stare into the sky
without any clear focus.
Do you see him now,
the hunter with his bow
outstretched, the belt
cinched about his waist
locked in his eternal search
for the prey that would free him
from his nightly quest.
And there, I pointed
can you see the great bear
gamboling with her child
or there a goddess reclining
on her heavenly throne.
Now she said, that’s
not it at all, not even close,
look over there, don’t you see
a small child crying out
for her mother,
and there, two lovers
locked in an eternal embrace,
their lips barely touching,
hips pressed together
reclining as one,
and there, clear as day
a cat lying curled
as though sleeping
in the warmth of a hearth.

Publshed in As Above, So Below, Issue 9, August 2022
https://issuu.com/bethanyrivers77/docs/as_above_so_below_issue_9

October 2, 2022

ON THE HORIZON

In crossing the event horizon
dualities collapse and crumble.
God and Satan are again merged
into a unity, pressed into diamond
its glint that of a thousand suns.

We follow as we must, for now
there is neither good nor evil,
there merely is, and we have found
the path we have been seeking
on the road to our sigularity.