The Speed of Light
Two truths approach each other. One
comes from inside, the
other from outside,,,
Tomas Transtromer
They approach (a sort of slow, creeping word)
at just under 300,000 kilometers per second.
You would think, since these truths
both travel at the speed of light, that their rate
would double, the way it works if two cars
were driving in opposite directions,
but it doesn’t happen that way.
Nothing, not even light or its cousin, truth,
can go any faster.
Where truths meet might be a black hole,
at the center of which might be a doorway
to another universe.
Maybe truths cancel each other out,
so that the ghostly crossroads they form
shimmer with meaning just beyond the senses.
I once knew a girl who saw her mother’s ghost
on a night when she had lost something precious,
a necklace or a ring.
Her mother’s hands were burning with blue flame.
She whispered secrets that had nothing to do
with hard facts. The girl fell asleep,
and though she never found her jewelry again,
she could sing like an angel.
Or at least like a good backup singer.
Truth, it seems, surrounds us, but often we’re afraid.
We hide in offices, basements, places
where we store old clothes.
Sometimes in dreams we ride beams of light
as time slows and our length shrinks toward nothingness.
The Blue Father
He sat in the kitchen,
hands folded like two broken birds.
The lamp above him hummed,
its light a pale coin.
He never spoke of the wars,
only of rivers that ran backward in dreams.
When I was small,
he’d open the cupboard and point,
flour dust drifting like snow
over cans without labels.
Once he showed me a jar of nails,
each bent, each rusted,
and said Here is the family treasure.
At night he climbed the stairs barefoot,
his shadow following
like a dark child too shy to speak.
Even in sleep,
he carried that shade of blue,
a sky that had lost its sun,
a suit pressed flat against the coffin’s lid.
How to Eat a Meal of Stars
Lay the table with silence,
a cloth woven from night’s black thread.
Arrange your plate in the center,
its rim wide enough to catch a galaxy’s spill.
Do not use forks our knives.
Stars resist such instruments,
preferring the soft dip of fingers,
the gentle lift of breath.
Take the smallest one first,
a pale ember rolling on your tongue,
salt of forgotten oceans,
sweetness of dust older than rain.
Let them burst slowly in your mouth,
each one a seed of fire,
each a story of collapse and bloom.
Chew carefully: their light is sharp.
Drink from a cup of shadow
to cool your throat,
to remind you of hunger’s twin,
the ache of emptiness waiting at the edge.
When the last star is gone,
sit with the dark that remains.
It will lean close,
wrap its long arms around you,
and whisper: this is. how the universe feeds itself.
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