Member Poem

for and after Saad Ali

after The Changing Light by Lawrence Ferlinghetti

We could be a billion galaxies,
undiscovered and untouched –

method of existence – a stray
particle in vibrant design of dust.

And when the cities come alight
beneath mediocre blankets of stars,

we could hold gravity in our hands
like the sum weight of our limitations;

of the space in time humans call
waiting, we'd be far ahead in living

after a cycle of deaths that burst
out of our eyes – rims of eclipses –

floating clouds of shimmering gas –
belts of shards like the rays of sun.

And when the cities would sleep,
we could be free like an unspoken

notion – imploding solar plexus –
like the book that was never written;

and we could swirl our radius broad,
stretch to thin, opaque eternity;

and we could be the hanging ocean,
our crust a hollow dense of rippling

shimmer. We could be yet not be,
mote or mute – waves of vibrant dust.