THE THEORY OF EVERYTHING

 1.

Stars

hang there

like broken glass in night’s gut.

They are slick along the sky,

the night is choked with them as a city is with light.

The dead grass is made metal

by starlight,

my shadow batters the earth

when I had been ready to put it in my back pocket

for the night, but the brightness

demands it show its face.

The wind presses on

like a weary muscle.

The crunch of my boot

is that of a man

making himself real by noise.

I realise that I am borrowing

a stranger’s night, one that’s silent

and chill and marked by signs I don’t understand.

I half expect

to see my double wander out

like some shredded wraith

from between the silverskinned gums

and shake his head,

his hair slick with dew

and a face made deadly by secrets

I should not have tried to share.

2.

Saturn

is a bright toy

engraved, silver-shot on the blank lens.

Its rings are sharp as eyelashes,

they hang there perfectly,

like someone had dropped a spinning top

and left it whirring for a few billion years.

3.

Sun

is a red razor it

splits night’s eyelid

and the starred iris pops, light

gushes in

and swallows the broken pieces of night

with blue-sky daylight.

The charred body of a log

still smokes in the concrete pit.

Coals

have crumbled to red ruins –

when there’s nothing left to burn

carbon burns at last,

burns slower, duller; red burning.

Stars do the same. Red star is dead star,

nearly.

Red is for endings.

Slow feet around the fire

as eyes are put away for the day

before the frost settles, before the fog

steals up from the valley to mist us in.

The earth has a sick look to it

after so long staring at the sky

                                                            what will we do

                                                            now the night has ended?