Scientists Confirm Most of the Universe Is

‘Darkness and Nothing More’

Which doesn’t explain the delicate tracery of fog whispered above a field of spent cornstalks after the harvest or the way rose sometimes lingers in the mouth when eating pear. You used to say you believed most people were fundamentally good. You instilled in me that belief or at least the desire for it to be true. You didn’t know you were describing yourself. If most of the universe is darkness and nothing more, that doesn’t account for starlight traveling through space, how it only seems absent until something receives or reflects its luminosity. You used to say nature knows best, and watching the way mushrooms fruit after rain, how fern seeds line the underside of fronds, and leaves follow the sun, I could appreciate when, halfway into your forgetfulness as you stood gazing at the ceiling, uncertain where you were and perhaps whether I was your daughter, your upturned face mirrored a glow like a thousand novas, a light I might never have seen.

Scientists Confirm Existence of Moon

…the round orb of it ) the luminous skin ) how expansive its glow ) rising low on the horizon ) yet smaller ) more distant as it mounts the sky ) tonight its face wears the ghostly silver of a Chinese money plant ) or an icy exhale of mist ) I like when sunlight rakes across the moon’s pitted face ) and you learn its textured past) like a new lover in the afterglow of sunset ) and when the moon trifles with the clouds ) blinking light through fogged panes ) spun rondel of medieval windows ) radiant disk at dusk ) tomorrow it will appear bigger ) or smaller ) earth will marvel at its transmogrifying magic ) the moon drifts ) head on a pillow ) as it lolls across the sky ) beams through the branches ) shadows cast like words ) this incantation ) this fractured light.