On this rock, just the right

      distance from the nearest star,

      sheltered by Jupiter and kept in season

      by the steadying moon,

      being moves through my body

      like clouds, arriving in one shape,

      drifting off as another.

      I don’t remember being born,

      only the great dog

      whose fur I clung to

      before the first day of school.

      Memory accounts

      for space, not time.

      It records the quality and angle

      of light, the keen, metallic scent of wind

      through porch screens — the wailing

      as it rises — the warmth and texture of air —

      the weather and sometimes

      whether or not it was a Tuesday,

      but never how long it lasted — or

      how many years ago — only

      how it felt — alone in that moment.

      And the sound of waves breaking.

      We see time past as Euclidian — moments

      of solitude with no date affixed —

      long afternoons of childhood in no time at all,

      when it first occurred that you were seven,

      without knowing that,

      because of the moment — now in memory —

      you will always be seven in that place.

      Our solitude — being alone

      with the one you knew there —

      our loneliness — being there

      without him.

      Two billion seconds of life

      now, on a planet only

      four and a half billion years

      old — and every atom on loan

      to it much older than that.

      In the beginning, all that was

      was too hot for atoms — too tightly

      packed to let go of its light —

      as if the universe

      had come out the other side of a black hole —

      heading back to where it began

      over ungraspable distance

      right now — and not at all

      far from home.

      Every creation story I know

      comes out of the dark —

      the brune garden in which light blooms.

      Dark matter pulling chaotic

      energy apart — breaking the prison

      of its own concentration —

      giving it space to be a wave.

      The master equation

      of the Standard Model of particle physics

      accounts for everything

      except gravity — and gravity

      accounts for everything —

      irresistible center of the spheres

      and stars, on and among which

      we go on — curving our

      straight course — as it draws

      the

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