Violent collision of stellar winds detected
Credit: NASA/HST/J. Morse/K. Davidson
You talk through the chronic sadness
of late Sunday, ignoring the sunlight
that slants over the new daffodils.
Tomorrow you will be gone to work
and I will be cleaning, both of us indifferent
to the violent collision of stellar winds
they say is happening right now,
the glow brighter than four million suns
together. Strange how invisible accidents
affect things: as we speak, the static
conversation of the big bang murmurs
in the background, though we can’t
hear it. And tonight, we’ll look up
to stars that are no longer there.
Twenty-one years ago we held
hands at twilight and spoke
of trivialities, keeping our voices
hushed in the darkness.
Now the conversation fades,
but the energy from Eta Carinae
is still apparent in the way our shoulders
touch, not precisely kissing, but colliding
nonetheless.
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Christine Klocek-Lim received the 2009 Ellen La Forge Memorial Prize in poetry. She has three chapbooks: Cloud Studies (Whale Sound Audio Chapbooks), How to photograph the heart (The Lives You Touch Publications), and The book of small treasures (Seven Kitchens Press). Her poems have appeared in Nimrod, OCHO, Poets and Artists (O&S), The Pedestal Magazine, Diode, the anthology Riffing on Strings: Creative Writing Inspired by String Theory and elsewhere. She is editor of Autumn Sky Poetry and her website is www.novembersky.com.