Science Matters
A quantum fluctuation
Can delete the universe
In a matter of seconds
I read all about it & still don’t understand
It has to do with the theory of vacuum decay
I could spend all day trying to figure that out
But I don’t have time
Because in approximately four billion years
Our galaxy will collide
With the Andromeda galaxy
& both will be destroyed
& in the process form another galaxy
My father once had a Ford Galaxie
My sister almost killed us in it
Braking just in time before
We hurtled off a cliff
Afraid to move or breathe
So close to the edge
We were as silent as space
I felt a weird calm
Like knowing the universe could vanish
In less than a sneeze
Does colossal loss somehow
Ease smaller losses
But who’s counting
Rivers trees starlings choking on our exhaust
I loved that car
Yellow like sunlight on wheels
I got my driver’s license & the next day crunched
The Galaxie with a telephone pole
I can’t remember what kind of car came next
I was starting to move into my own constellation
& my sister got married & had children who now
Have children & my parents flew past Andromeda
One fluctuation after another & what comes next
Is a subject for contemplation
At three in the morning lying in bed
Like something as cryptic as a quantum
Carried by something magnificent
We’ve colossally dented
No foot no brake
The cliff coming toward us
* * * * *
Going Through
Your student plagiarizes for three paragraphs
& then writes his own mercifully brief conclusion:
The author is very stereotypical in this essay her being
an angry feminist most feminists if not all
want to be men that is why there
so bitter I know because I grew up in marin county.
You stare at the “there” and think, Now there
is something I can fix.
& it’s crucial to pour a glass of wine
because you should get away from your desk
& not write an email, saying, So far, you have an F grade
in the class because even though you grew up in Marin County,
you are a dumbass.
In the chair by the window in the apartment you rented
across the street from the homeless encampment,
you & your wine read the next chapter of the novel,
What Are You Going Through?
The main character is staying with a friend who has cancer.
The friend plans to commit suicide before the last ravages of the disease.
This book is also about climate change & the last ravages of that disease.
This book has great writing,
but it makes you cry in your sleep.
You wake to the river of air conditioner noise,
to smoke from the wildfires burning the hair in your nostrils,
to your husband who has just walked in the door.
He spends his days cleaning the litter box
or driving around the locked-down town,
looking for a house he can’t afford or a job that doesn’t exist.
He drives through the broiling afternoons, past the city limits
toward orchards of almonds & peaches.
Some days you go with him because
he wants to show you what’s still possible
out by the river, the egret & geese,
the fast-moving current, that autumn is here
& there, there, there
are dark pools of coolness under the leaves.