Astropoetica: Is It Me, Or Is That You?, by T. E. GilChrist

minute tick twitches homeward, nearer the next event horizon
black holes and light wait on the other side of diminishing velocity
is that your apparel of stars discarded on the edge of eternity?
heaven's floor masquerading cosmic clouds where you step out,
disrobed of eons, like dust bunnies drifting across tiles
swept into galaxies past - etched from previous universes
when gravity pulls greater than the speed of light

closer to home

is that your thunder entering my trail of experiences, eluding
contemplations of greatness, like hair-raising static,
I could have sworn you might have touched me with?
perhaps it's nothing more than my imagination tangled with
delusions of grandeur, rationalizing ordinary into extraordinary
a whirlwind blips across the doppler screen
somewhere trees snap like toothpicks in fingertips

are those your eyes moving what none in harm's way ignores
a camera's eye view observed from beyond the atmosphere
tropical storms become hurricane's eyes tropically depressed
farther out, a solar flare erupts from the sun's surface
perhaps previewing another star collapsing on itself
during the hunt and peck of a keystroke is it me
or is that you seeing what no other eyes see?

T. E. GilChrist started writing poetry regularly about five years ago. He has been submitting to publishers for the past year. He hopes this is the first poem of many he sees published. Now 51, he is on disability retirement from the Postal Service. At 26 his spinal cord was injured after a dive into shallow water. The injury caused paralysis from the shoulders down. He uses a mouthstick and voice-recognition software to write through the use of a computer. He wrote this piece after reading Stephen Hawking's book, A Brief History in Time. Currently he is active in an e-mail critique group called Kingdom Writers.