Nine Year Microwave Sky

This poem was one of eight shortlisted for the Australian Poetry Science Poetry Prize in 2013. Here it is again in case you missed it.


Nine Year Microwave Sky

You thought you could dive through time
as you did the seventh waves
of Cape Conran as a child

You thought the gaping black
was hollow,
except for the odd miracle

languid and creaking, bejewelled
in moons and singing.

But it’s a dusty contradicting force,
full of debris and decisions
colliding like chance love.

You didn’t realise your ballooning mind
dined on curiosity
at the periodic table,

impossibly expanding in
the belly of a finite law, stuffing

hot stars into your skull
[ as much as its pockets
could hold ]

You didn’t notice your flesh
was blushing,
even as you lay your cooling gaze

on me

I didn’t notice
because my newlywed’s red dress
had me burning up

on her entry.



-- -- more about the Nine Year Microwave Sky can be found here and here

-- originally posted at http://migueljacq.com/2014/01/29/nine...