October 2017
Laurel Peterson
laurelpeterson@att.net
laurelpeterson@att.net
I’ve been writing since I was eight, despite being told that I shouldn’t. Writing revealed too much. This is why I tell my students they should never be afraid to put the truth on the page. I’m a community college English professor, who alternately loves and despairs of her students. I’ve written lots of different things—newspaper columns, academic stuff, poems (including two chapbooks and a forthcoming full-length collection) and a couple of mystery novels, one of which will be published this spring by Barking Rain Press. I have the very great pleasure of serving the town of Norwalk, Connecticut, as its poet laureate. At this very moment, my dog is sniffing through my trash for a draft of something to chew on. My website: www.laurelpeterson.com
THE LIGHT DARK MATTER EXPERIMENT
“Researchers have uncovered enough clues to think dark matter makes up approximately 26.8 percent of all the matter and energy in the universe. They think it forms a sort of gravitational scaffolding for the galaxies and galaxy clusters our telescopes do reveal, shaping the structure of our universe while remaining unseen.” Symmetry, August 23, 2017
It’s the velvet emptiness behind us all,
the blank black space we can’t see
and not because we’re not looking.
It’s the gravitational force that pulls us into shape—
that woman walking down the street,
her left shoulder higher than her right,
or the man who limps or the boy-child who hides.
What dark matter froze my grandmother’s limbs,
seized my grandfather’s heart?
What dark matter makes my father shout
Jehovah is the only god,
lures boys to pick up guns to shoot their friends.
Looking straight at it, it’s invisible,
the sun in eclipse, energy in shade,
a shade some name God or collective
unconscious or low-mass dark matter,
spirit that moves us beyond our comprehension.
VOYAGER’S GOLDEN RECORD
Just imagine: it pulls up
to another planet with human life,
people like us, no extra eyes
or toes or tentacles.
They have language, a Christ, gin.
How lonely to discover
kin across the galaxy,
a billion years away near the center
of the universe, while you inhabit the edge—
or is it the reverse?
We’re here—but how to find us
in the incredible expanse of space?
Little Voyager, a pilgrim between worlds,
one-way communication, carries
a record of music, photographs, sounds of Earth—
a home that’s lost to them.
Or are we the lost ones,
siblings separated by the Big Bang,
each revolving around our separate, lonely stars.
THE LIGHT DARK MATTER EXPERIMENT
“Researchers have uncovered enough clues to think dark matter makes up approximately 26.8 percent of all the matter and energy in the universe. They think it forms a sort of gravitational scaffolding for the galaxies and galaxy clusters our telescopes do reveal, shaping the structure of our universe while remaining unseen.” Symmetry, August 23, 2017
It’s the velvet emptiness behind us all,
the blank black space we can’t see
and not because we’re not looking.
It’s the gravitational force that pulls us into shape—
that woman walking down the street,
her left shoulder higher than her right,
or the man who limps or the boy-child who hides.
What dark matter froze my grandmother’s limbs,
seized my grandfather’s heart?
What dark matter makes my father shout
Jehovah is the only god,
lures boys to pick up guns to shoot their friends.
Looking straight at it, it’s invisible,
the sun in eclipse, energy in shade,
a shade some name God or collective
unconscious or low-mass dark matter,
spirit that moves us beyond our comprehension.
VOYAGER’S GOLDEN RECORD
Just imagine: it pulls up
to another planet with human life,
people like us, no extra eyes
or toes or tentacles.
They have language, a Christ, gin.
How lonely to discover
kin across the galaxy,
a billion years away near the center
of the universe, while you inhabit the edge—
or is it the reverse?
We’re here—but how to find us
in the incredible expanse of space?
Little Voyager, a pilgrim between worlds,
one-way communication, carries
a record of music, photographs, sounds of Earth—
a home that’s lost to them.
Or are we the lost ones,
siblings separated by the Big Bang,
each revolving around our separate, lonely stars.
© 2017 Laurel Peterson
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