Walking in the Spring Grasses

I understand that when there’s enough matter in the universe,

including dark matter, gravity will halt the expansion and begin

a collapse. Galaxies, stars, will smash into each other over

and over. Nothing can live through that, on any planet.

You see my concern, all this matter we’ve got here. Buds

turning into small cups on the branches. Leaves unfurling.

The sheer weight of leaves when before, only branches. All

adding up! I try to lose weight but don’t. How many more

electromagnetic waves can be crammed into the air before

the phones grow heavy with language, before language

collapses into noise and we have to hold our ears? Already

it’s impossible to carry on a conversation in a restaurant!

But out here it’s still so spacious, on top of the earth

where gravity only whispers its name. Don’t think I don’t

appreciate all this, the fields of tender new grasses,

everything rising and spreading for 200 billion years.

But the sun has only 4.5 billion years before it dies. In 100

billion years the carbon cycle will end, the seas will evaporate.

Everything will go extinct. I think the universe must be

thinking this, also, the way it gives forth all the babies

with their darling noses and delicate fingers and the shutters

opening their wings to a soft breeze and the small red spiders

spindling the corners. To make everything glitter, almost neon,

you might say, against the dark. Like a painting on black velvet.