Nobody Gets Off the Bus:
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Poetry by Carole Ten Brink
Space Age
In the sixties when I was growing up
we threw out the Sci-Fi stories every day.
Now, real accounts are kept to the millisecond.
Voyager snaps images of Jupiter
so that I pick up a magazine
& all her moons swirl in my hands
from such giddy angles and distances.
Or look love
how we can see ourselves from out there
& gaze back at our globe, that small blue agate
tangled in gauze; how far back it is
where we hold each other, falling, tumbling
as when I touch you, dead center
At such a moment
with my probing fingers edged in fire
I glimpse those orange-reds of Jupiter,
those galactic movements
snapped tight
so that even love's exacting rhythm
proves centrifugal.
We start turning on our own axis
swaying through such circles in space
Who knows how far we could be hurled
& rise too quickly after
to find ourselves stranded
The Visionary Scientist Speaks
Spy a little closer on any place you know
and you will become a stranger here.
Your chair is a sea of energy.
Ions acquire charge in your soup.
Your footprints plant heat on the seashore
and the sea absolves your negative charge.
Your hands swarm with atoms dancing
while the sun leaves fire on your head.
We sink our prehensile toes into earth
and heads will clear like green light.
Folded inside the lines on our faces
a wondrous darkness is seeding.
See how the iris poises sword-shaped leaves on air
and the whale sifts her plankton all day.
When toads leap by the water spicket
they are grand and selfless as eagles.
Our velvet fingers distinguish each rain drop.
All our senses spew memories into the sky.
Existence throws itself up constantly in the void
and comes down again, slippery as a newborn babe.