Poem in Which I Drift Off While an Astrophysicist Tells Me About What Makes His Relationship Work
the morning in the yard, wiping toast crumbs off my jeans.
For god’s sake – I was excited by – let’s call it data.
Imagine a small piece of matter
about my size,
now imagine it’s morning, let’s say 6:31 am,
mist in the conifers, a cuckoo, then in the road, reversing, a car
sure red’s as good a colour as any,
then let us say, spaghetti.
Spaghetti is like the bath overrun:
that’s you or me crossing the event horizon
matter, or Mike so warm on my chest, brooding
he is my very own human electric blanket
the day
stretching out, the windows a string of zeroes.
Let’s say the darker the matter the better the punchline
and memories live on with the length-meaning of n.
There is a kind of equilibrium to sadness
the death of someone so close to you; do eight minutes pass
before it ghosts into you – the pan handle’s heat through a tea-towel? No.
The Northern Lights’ lavender green dust
happens to be the sun, I can’t fill the void.
Flying at 3,000 times the speed of sound,
that’s the way he makes me feel, his self-diagnosing
the tea bag bobs in the water, the Beach Boys upstairs.
Ah, this is your lifeline, it is like the Orion test
booster exiting the Florida cirrus –
this is where your love line crosses –
mine does the same, here, observe,
to kiss you took years of research
there are some things you can explain
anything else
come down to the kitchen and dance with me.
Harry Man
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