I shot the learn'd astronomer today
Awakened by a pronoun beyond this ink's escape.

Let us swim, it says, beyond this molten proton current,
Beyond this reaction's mote and drawbridged core.
Let's feel the fish, it says, with our wrists and watch
Rounds of fissioned deaths and heats,
Cure words and curling thoughts
While these, our bodies, spin plasmas, complete.

Let us toast, I say, and sip the isotopes away
Wheel our cinders and garden hoes by barrel
These our mushroomed sprouts,
Rake and hoe by pencil and scalpel.
Squeeze that cough and hack till nose
Streams sooty wit and weedy hair.

Orbit a kiss to boil and lap the gasses;
Release our pronouns with skipping atom stones
And, with us, steal ourselves a hidden laughter
Hidden in weights of helium pores.