Reverie
Atlas finally dropped the Earth –
I can feel it in my muscles,
We are hurtling free of tether
Out to space without a course.
Master Galileo mourns
His celestial revolutions
They are dead by execution –
Bells are knelling in my pores.
And the gasses round this sphere
Churn like myriad raging teapots.
What will come of Newton’s Laws?
And of music? And of rhyme?
Where on Earth now crickets chime?
Only in my homesick sinews –
I, who always was so fond
Of familiar space and time.
Thinking thus and feeling so,
I was walking of an evening
And discovered that my footsteps
Left no imprint in the snow.
Thus alone in moonless glow
I believed that none could find me
That the forest closed behind me
Full of stars I didn’t know.
But I came upon a sight
Warmed my heart like quick desire:
Twilight, warmth, a home a fire,
Bookshelves in the firelight.
Galileo set inside
By a hearth that smoldered amber
And his face was wise and tender
And he called me to the light.
There familiar South and North
And the roots I reckoned groundless
All like kite strings gathered soundless
Bound to his unyielding force.
“Did I let us veer off course?
Ye of little faith” – he chuckled
And adjusted with his knuckles
The foundations of the Earth.
Copyright © 2023 Anna Braverman