November 15, 2013
There were years of prime
when I looked upon a living bay
pulsing with life, pulled
by celestial bodies, and saw
numerical mesh
stretching through
the sterile ether.
Such a stately parade
of symbols set in spare beauty –
partial c’s sliding slopes
of Q and E, of x and t,
but no longer.
The crystalline equations fade;
their symbols spill
off dog-eared pages
graced with arcs of coffee stain
in manuals with my name inside
and broken backs, now boxed
and stored in cardboard tombs
of moth and mildew, must and tears.
I find my life now softly fallen
in the gentle in-between
while plowing through uncharted now
as Voyager past the heliopause
no longer here
but not yet there.
So I shut my eyes in warm sun
and drift down whole days.
The world is my back yard,
the afterlife unfenced.
I wander a peaceable kingdom
where voices chant in strange tongues
from the distance of dreams,
and though I cannot catch their meaning
sure as Voyager shoots beyond,
I shall sing their soul, unknowing.