“What is it, then, between us?” – Walt Whitman

Love, like light, has no mass, is information:
far more than what we find in the library
or online…suns laugh at how we gather
knowledge. Imagine a poem with no beginning
or end, no poet or reader, words or meaning—
just rhythm, pulse. Let it be this music that plays
over the exhaustion of work, parenthood, drive.
What good are the particles we’ve come to call
me and you, if not to release them like doves?
We are paper boats on the great waters; we won’t
survive these rapids. See how the cliffs promise
annihilation? There is nothing to be afraid of!
We’ll read poetry to our children, do our best to
explain quantum physics, hope that they see through
the artifice of giving them names. We do what we do
to make it in this world; forgetting who we are
pays the bills, puts food on the table. Perhaps it’s
only, stomachs full, hoarding our allotment of atoms,
that we can accept our folly. And yet, how pleasurable
this game! The weight of bodies, your voice in my ear…