The Man Who Fell for the Universe

The Man Who Fell for the Universe
for Nick Herbert

Over fifty years he has courted her,
plainly smitten. Having also
been ravished by her
beauty, I understand.
We woo our dreams as we must
and not always know
how we have pleased or not.
Now he comes to ask me
how to begin with her—
as if I, a fellow fool
for her, might know.

My old advice: Bring
her to laughter,
which is a form of surrender
involving the lips and tongue,
a convulsive cry
and a rush of pleasure
shared.

Second: Offer secrets
that yours might mingle
with hers and beget more.

But if she is silent?

This I know for a fact:
she has whispered to him
things we may never understand,
and like a seahorse stallion
he has borne and reared them
as her and his children.
So many, but I cite two:
the shortest proof of Bell’s Theorem
and the explanation of the most plausible
theory of consciousness I know.

Ah what nights, what blazing kisses,
darting tongues, guiding hands
and moans of ecstatic congress
we cannot know, but all these
children flourishing in the world
do testify.

Len Anderson is a Live Oak poet, recovering physicist
and one of the movers and shakers of Poetry Santa Cruz.
He is married to Elke Maus.