Bared Again

The pillars of creation

Are the fangs of the serpent.

The reason Galileo,

Dead the year Newton was born,

Disliked the hypothesis

That the tides showed the moon’s pull

Was that it smacked of magic,

Or, in Einstein’s words, spooky

Action at a distance. Once

You’re comfortable with one

Weirdness, you want no others.

But then again, all of them,

The physicists, looked forward,

Explorers and optimists,

Collectors and explainers,

Connecters and extenders—

Those types don’t like doubling back.

Poets are all about tides.

We slosh about like sea-wrack.

We’re nothing if not doubling,

Retreating, and returning,

Hissing back down into sand.

Tides never stop coming in,

And, as Hala Alyan notes

In a recent poem, we’re here

To remind you of that fact

And remind you of that fact,

Which means permanent ruin

Of all impermanent sand

Castles, as she also notes.

We roll in spooky action,

And see the same destruction

For every fine creation,

Poets. We’re beachcombers,

Not true explorers. We see

Spookiness in death and flesh,

In flotsam, all connections,

And we savor it, even

In the fangs of creation.

Sculpted and eroded by

The ultraviolet light

And powerful winds from stars

The cosmic pillars themselves

Are destined for destruction.