The Short Side

When Cold Moon lights the longest night 
we’re on the short side 
of the sun.

These are the days of dusk 
when the pale sun 
beats west 

through half-hearted arcs 
to warm a far-off 
southern sea 

and Orion rises, red-shouldered 
east into evening to hunt 
the midnight sky.

This is the season of silhouettes, 
when dark forms 
cast shadows 

on a velvet void 
to illumine by absence 
a vast empty realm 

where love lies below layers, 
faith stands by frozen, 
and hope taunts the dormant heart. 

This is the grace of unknowing, 
the stage beyond belief and doubt, 
a place to bank the fire, and wait. 

Till Ice Moon lights late winter nights 
we're on the short side 
of the sun.

"Orion" from ScienceBlogs
by Ethan Siegel

The Comfort of Fading

Athens, Georgia
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.