She was beside this guy,
and beside herself with her
and him. She remembers sitting
on his shoulders while the sun
set over Jerusalem. She
was smiling in such a way
that the sun was backing down
from a challenge neither it nor I
had seen, which is why
I took the picture.

It was beautiful to see. The tilt
of her head for his photographs, the link
of her arm for his steadying walk, the share
of her sounds with him--one
earbud apiece--all the things
she used to do with me

And in the holy city I was blessed
to see her dance
between two kinds of love
so seamlessly

The silicon in sand is learned
by crystal system, organized
into branches and the seed
crystal is cubic imagine
diamonds in the grains
imagine cut
against the grain a glass tree
doesn't know enough
of crystal symmetry to grow
back imagine it opens
a book leaves to pages
to learn only half
how to help the other
half how to dissociate
ions scattered across the earth
crust never enough.
This is how sand is made.

From the sixth floor on a Sunday
night you can see
the snake of green

lights switch to red, cars
jarred back a hundred
times stopped in tracks.

There is the jolt
when the robin's egg
cracks in my hands

that is the **** motion of waking
up from falling backwards. There
is the second hand, second

law of thermodynamic
arrow of time, the red
leaves want the earth

beneath them and sooner die
than go back up. There is sitting
cross-legged next to a jigsaw

waiting to see
why one can only wait
in one direction.

Of course, you can see
the traffic lights change
on other nights too,

but Sunday is the one I'm thinking of.

With windswept hair and the beginnings
of smiles, faces in focus and the backs
blurred, arms out to the sides like birds
that are already flying, hands in hands
that brighten what is around them
instead of fighting it. Serenading each
other with words that settle into
the crisscrossing of passers by instead
of matching them step for fist. Wouldn’t
that be nice. Instead we sit a little apart
on the rocks, because even when
we are close the telescopes magnify
the distance, and I look up instead
of around, trying to recall the difference
between comets and asteroids and
meteors but only half in it. Those things
could be anything, as long as I get to watch
something else burn as it falls.

Hubble saw stars between stars and
there is more space all the time. Sometimes
things go in fine and come out far.
But what about us is getting more apart?
What about Einstein seeing the same
signature of space expansion as you?
What about couples who smell different
though they use the same shampoo?  
What about black boxes—does
the butterfly remember its cocoon?
Does a firefly see its own light? What about
dressing babies in clumsy shoes?
Do bare feet mean nothing to you?

if vacuum decay swallows
this entire disarray, then
we are not the chosen
ones. this boson
eats your faith for
breakfast or any
meal--time does not
have mass.

every 13 years cicadas
come out screaming,
crickets crying, dragonflies
are dying and fireflies
falling into luminescent
dreams, the crepuscular insect
menagerie.

as the sky thunders and lights,
here's to wishing the lightning bugs
a safe night.