©Thomas Van Horn
In the center of one night
Not so long ago
On top of a hill,
I stared at the stars;
Billion-year-old explosive light
Twinkled before starlight haze
Laid over endless space.
But endless?
If it isn’t endless
Then there’s a boundary.
So…if the universe has dimensions
And shape,
Then what’s beyond the edge?
There I lay
Looking that far.
The children,
Grouped by law,
Circled their mother star;
A member of some collection of stars.
Perhaps in a swirl together;
An eddy on a galactic spiral arm scale.
An arm,
Huge in itself,
Just a portion of the wheel.
The wheel,
Our galaxy;
Bigger than we like to think about.
Just a twinkle, though,
In a 3-D field of twinkles.
Galaxies and galaxies grouped,
In swirls and eddies?
Forever.
If it doesn’t go on forever
Then perhaps the space beyond it does.
What would be the space
Beyond space?
Perhaps the edge of the universe is the skin
Of an amoeba.
On that hill I lay
Looking that far
When I fell back
Into the center of my heart,
Made of meat,
Made of fibers,
Made of cells,
Made of molecules,
Made of atoms,
Made of what…
Something smaller?
How far that way does it go?
What’s the smallest thing that, all together,
Makes up the entire universe?
Do you suppose
There are clusters
Of universes?
A bunch of amoebae swimming around?
The funny thing is,
The same space
That’s in between
The tiniest objects that exist
Is the same space
That’s in between
The largest conglomerations
Of collective star stuff
And all the children thereof.
All stuff
Hangs
In the same space.
I stood,
Coming back from
That far in.
Tree frogs and crickets
In nighttime symphony;
Snakes and spiders, too.
Ready to eat.
My world;
In between
All the way in
And all the way out.
…..
