http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2011/10/111004091704.htm
Newton told us
that anything with mass has gravity,
and everything pulls on everything else
all the time.
The moon is always falling towards us
and always missing us.
It writes Craigslist ads and telecommutes,
remembers our face from the crowd,
wonders what our number is,
searches for us on Facebook.
Always comes up empty.
It’s not a love story. It’s the missed connection
of atmosphere grazing stone,
of a surface without air, battered by billions of years
worth of meteorites. Frankly,
it’s fucking brutal.
I worry sometimes that this is us:
that the closest we come to touch
is the mathematics of downward flight,
foiled by an eternal pull
we can feel but never satisfy.
This is why the tides rise -
because the moon is iron
and the sea is anemic.
And if the closest it gets
to satisfaction is tasting the beach
it’ll swallow every last grain of sand,
thin-blooded water forever lapping at the shore.
In a universe that’s always expanding,
we will eventually lose one another.
I found the old big bang theories
comforting – that someday, we will all return
to a pinpoint, compressed together
forever. But astronomy disproves
all comforting lies. We are always pulling apart,
and the stars we gaze tonight
become the cold void of tomorrow.
Maybe this is how
the cycle breaks.
I write all this to say
that I miss you, mom.
I was a rambunctious child,
an earth too full of war and famine
to appreciate the night sky.
You were a distant moon,
wide pale face almost as cold
as the darkness you refused to show me.
You always kept your distance,
maybe because tongue clicking stars
whispered their disapproval
in comet crashes and meteor showers.
We did this silent dance every night,
and even during the day, I felt you
pulling on my waters
dragging swimmers out to drown.
You grew into this role, decided
that distance suited you.
Let your silence build strength,
until you launched yourself away
from me completely, riding
the solar winds of an expanding universe,
a ragged, broken orbit left in your wake.
You are the moon the earth loses,
an asteroid hurtling through deep space,
the failure of gravity and theory
mathematics and astronomy.
Maybe this is how
the cycle breaks.
The tides lay fallow now,
accepting anemia and frailty.
And a darker sky leans closer and
breathes, coldly.
