Paul tried to feed his logical mind
so he could taste the infinite.
But logic rejected all of his astronaut dreams,
fantastical dragons and Dali surrealism.
So his mind ate a bland fair
of serious words and earth sciences.
His eyes saw starlight as math.
Equations proved speed and time.
His arm never rose from his side
to reach toward the galaxy.
Mid-sentence he lost himself
as nearby thunder shook
an oyster shell open
to reveal an opalescent sun.
It rose out of the shell
to take a place in Paul’s void.
It spun in that empty space
around an all consuming blackness
that entangles stars
but consumes only one arc second of light.
A single ray as thin as spider silk
stretched across empty parsecs.
copyright © 2020 Kenneth P. Gurney
Umflop 