Poet Wrestling with the True Nature of the Photon

If you want to know the answer to everything—

& by this I mean how to land on the moon

styx, the smallest of pluto, just to stick

a wreath in its water-ice

& leave, without even taking

a photo—then I can tell you

I too got it wrong, giving all

my attention & ache & ardor

to the electron, who’s too busy binding matter & clearly

too stable, holding our heads up & keeping our hearts

in the dark. The electron looks after reality, keeps it going

somewhere & doesn’t peacock with mystique, no, that’s you

pitching salt as you cross the black cat

with a ladder. That’s you & another

you who have so little belief

in each other that youronly

bond is whispering

Macbeth in the dark

theatre & rattling

every full house

for hours, every hand dropping a glass & turning

into the toss of a breath, sleep no more, no less

than spinning a parasol indoors with one sock on, both shoes on a table.

That’s the unbinding of a human condition. That’s eyes straining to see

less, before the mirror that breaks itself

every billion years. Think carefully now,

how you2 are never in the same room & when “you”

are, it’s the only refuge & the other is intruding.

It doesn’t matter who wins. It’s what can’t quite

end: what is not a thing at all, but a disturbance

that does not exist

until it’s discovered,

& yet when it appears,

it ceases to be? Because

that’s everything, I promise. It’s just *you’ll  * never

have it, since the photon is not receptive or self-

evident & yet the answer to yourtrillions

of moons that orbit swift disturbances.

But look at you. Look how even

if {you} get the smallest bit

close, {u} creep & cant

that they circle urown dust

& hands, busy sticking everything

with cut flowers & wedding bands.

As if a surface

digs itself deep

into the light u believe *u*

grasp. As if there’s no other

evidence that life did,

at one time, flash before

its own

divine.