Size / / /

"While [Einstein's] 'marble' of space-time was clean and elegant, the 'wood' of matter-energy was a horrible jumble of confused, seemingly random forms."

—from Hyperspace: A Scientific Odyssey Through Parallel Universes, Time Warps, and the Tenth Dimension by Michio Kaku and Robert O' Keefe.

I am the universe

seamless rolls of marble,

color breathing into color,

darkness and light

like the sun easing sky

into sea at the day's end.

I am the universe,

the beginning and the end, yet

staring into this sun, your eyes

I feel not

like marble: glowing,

hard, resplendent

but dry, like wood.

Crackling with fire.

Consumed.




Marci Rae Johnson teaches at Valparaiso University and is the Poetry Editor for WordFarm press. Her poems appeared in The Valparaiso Poetry Review, The Louisville Review, and 32 Poems, among others. Her first collection of poetry will be published by Sage Hill Press later this year.
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