the centennial light

in a gravelly arbour of the world

near foothills and fault lines, subbasins

and Silicon Valley, the Golden Gate

and eighty thousand glints of aurora

a light bulb’s candy-wrapper glow, its

carbon swirls have shone across eons –

a light bulb’s meek incandescence

you call, in your present malady

                           an event horizon.

·       

because, blind

               in its inanimateness to forms

               of darkness – those it’s barred

               those it’s left to flood for fathomless years

               the Centennial Light is a point of no return

beyond which nothing escapes

endures for a sanctioned time

in diminution, dies a dismal death

in the void, and thus deceased, is forgotten –

·       

but the piles of antimatter that stink

that threaten to consume all tracts of space

that gorge on growth and grow in vast black holes

on outskirts and reclaimed dead zones, that reach

                                                            the final line

                                                     

on sweeping winds

                     of love primed for swift expiry

                     aren’t all loveless when sequestered.

                     loveless and outmoded aren’t the same

                     loveless and superseded aren’t the same –

·       

love, function – always interlaced, but

when the Bay Area light bulb is dead

when the event horizon, that glimmer of evidence

sole signage to the darkness is lost, they will be one –

smeared like a daub on the rim before your eyes

then sucked into material oneness

and you, you’ll fall in and out of love

too many times to count, and you’ll be helpless.