Light
It’s beyond me, the pinhole in Hubble’s eye tomorrow as predicted,
(and lingo beyond me—some chicken scratching,
a few noises standing up for red giants, string theory)
and Sol his own self making stuff take place, beyond me
the melting ice fern on the window,
these four lesions on my face, and yes a radish and maple syrup.
It’s beyond me, the streetlamp out front of 3236 Rex Avenue
holding its sulphurous light over the street
and the cripple Debbie inside the post-war cape
with her clenched hand.
Beyond me are light’s eleven tongues,
the streetlamp talking her father’s parked dump truck
safely through the night, and Debbie’s squealing laughs
getting hit playing dodgeball.
Roger still tries to pry his sister’s locked fingers
to show us the imperfection in Debbie’s palm,
the reason for her crippled body, the meaning of life,
to which the streetlamp as good as says,
What is lit goes dark, what goes dark gets relit.
Debbie’s fist will not open, especially now
after she’s squealing lo these several decades,
even now after all this incandescence and fluorescence,
but in her palm I believe a dot lives,
like the still central point of a pinwheel nebula,
of a radish, of a rubber ball, a dot beyond me, yes,
beyond light. All it ever says is Open.
by Dennis Finnell
from Ruins Assembling
Shape and Nature Press, 2014