To You

I’ve walked among the broken and handed out biscuits
And smiles
As I’ve wondered down the streets of the town
From block to block and slow side street to busy corner
And stoop
Greeting your eyes with a kind word or directions, if I knew
Them or you cared to hear
My whispered wishes riding the winds reaching your ears
“Lift up your heads and nod to one another”
I shook hands or waved to those of you that I knew
Or wished to know me
Encouraged those of you who sit, not knowing what you
Wait for
Sang with the street musicians, roaming about for dimes
I shared what was in my lungs with you
And you, others that are to come
The plants that kept me alive, their ancestors will you
What I breathe in at fall, their seed in your spring delight you
When there were parks I would watch the young parents
Watching their wards
Or feed the squirrels with those who had passed that time
Before me
But I feel your pulling away like the moon moving away from
The earth at only millimeters a decade
I feel the stretch of the universe, that movement of time
The town has become a city and there are too many streets for me
To cross
I leave those to you
I’ve sang my songs and now it is up to you to carry and call the tune
What materials that I was blessed to use is yours
I’m reduced to the atoms from which I rose
And into the silence that I was

Stephen Hawking Dances

Sitting on the cusp of my extinction
I’m perched on the cliffs of my uninhabited isle
Throwing bottles into the sea
Some are corked, some are not, some contain messages, others not
No two messages are the same, I think linearly
Because of the undertow, the rocks below are littered with glass
And some wet paper
And the beach down the way
Is covered with returns
I’ve been taking my living out of bottles again and I have plenty
I had over-understood your kindnesses
So all of the messages are about or to you
I have lived in exile too long and have only heard the
The rushing of the wind or only my heartbeat in my ears
Orange turning to red, cooling to green and then blue
I darn not close my eyes and watch what is on the inside
Projected onto my lids
At night I stare up into the stars as they dance around
I saw Stephen Hawking dance once
And the music that he stepped to was
“Nothing produces nothing, it produces something”
He proved, mathematically, what we’ve all known all along
There is nothing
Black holes don’t suck in all of time and space and
Turn them into nothing
They emit Hawking radiation
And begin the dance again
There is no end, just different states of being
So nice that equations are made to sing so eloquently
Like stars we’re all slamming into one another at the speed of light
Or traveling away from one another
Deeper and deeper into dark mattered space
Degrading as time takes its toll
I need to slam into other bodies and emit positive energy
Not just to sit and stare into space and drink and fart