BY BRUCE McRAE
Copyright is held by the author.
“The lines are straight
and swift between the stars,”
said Wallace Stevens,
belying his little knowledge
of the trends in modern physics,
spacetime curving in on itself
to reveal the source and ending
of every journey ever started.
Presently I’m writing to you
from a darkness so complete
it’s as if I’d never been born.
At this speed the stars recede
into their icy holes and hollows.
Our bleary-eyed moon
is no more or less a memory.
A few stars wink enticingly,
as if in on humanity’s secret —
that we are brave and frightened
in equal measure and turns.
Goodbye, frozen Earth.
Goodbye, friends and family
and the constant nod of gravity,
the third law of motion
pushing us on ahead, earthy heights
a mere bump under the firmament,
the sky so wide and deep
it’s the very definition of forever.
Between the planets
darkness attains unheard-of depths.
Light beams lose their way,
as I have lost the little that is left of me.
Matter hardly matters
when suspended between space and time,
the photographs I carry
a reminder of truth’s great dare —
that we are alone
and shall always be lonely.
I could mention the hopeless heart
and the stories of a lover’s downfall.
I could tell you, in all honesty,
that reality doesn’t exist,
that the promises of tomorrow
are signed in blood, in triplicate,
the beaches on Venus, they tell us,
the colour of old honey,
its golden fields crying out
for the steady hands of settlers,
our blue-green globe too small,
too old, to carry on much further.
No longer the forgotten
children of entropy,
today, my fellow passengers,
we are bound in freedom
***
Bruce McRae, a Canadian musician, is a multiple Pushcart nominee with poems published in hundreds of magazines such as Poetry, Rattle and the North American Review. His latest book, Boxing In The Bone Orchard, is available now via Frontenac House.
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