Poetry and science 2

January 9, 2022 by Karen Dennison 1 Comment

She began in the long unlit, not knowing she was alive

The first thing she knew was light,
          then heat, the attraction of matter;
contours of her body curving, turning.

For measureless time she grew,
          gathered the dust of old ideas,
made them bright again; set them

spinning in blackness, throwing
          circles of light, molecules speaking
a language she taught them.

Now she tries to peer beyond her edges,
          but she’s trapped in a spiralling self,
a growing emptiness. Dark holes inside

suck her substance; she senses in them
          the before and after, the secret geometry
of her birth, the shifting shape of a slow cold death.

Karen Dennison

First published in Corbel – Nature and Death.

Featured image – By European Space Agency – https://www.esa.int/ESA_Multimedia/Images/2013/03/Planck_CMB, CC BY-SA 4.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=108189337