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Tapestry
Poetry



Lights

by Kate Gilpin

The mystics--and lately the physicists--tell us
that even the tiniest parts of the universe
think, thus making the quarks and the photons
all sentient beings (accounting for features like
color and charm).
Endlessly humming in cosmic agreement
they spin and they smile and they form combinations
like tables and mandalas, sunsets and choruses,
fingers and taxis and lymph nodes and rock singers,
pandas and amber, sarcomas and oboes,
Madonna, Attila, Pavlova, Guevara,
spaghetti, intaglios, embroglios, seraglios,
joining and parting in sheer subatomic
communion, these affable, radiant charmers
connect by design, are designed to connect,
each ineffable particle meeting and greeting
its fellows forever -- well anyway, since the big
bang.

And if that weren't enough (it all thinks, only think!),
the same unimpeachable sources inform us
that everything down to the nethermost smidgen
is interdependent on everything else, which means
each time you laugh there's some plant in Brazil
that produces a berry which sooner or later, and
ground up and roasted, will turn up as part of your
breakfast.
Now we already knew that we act on each other;
it's really old hat that the moon and the tides
and pre-menstrual syndrome are closely connected.
What's shocking is how the whole cloth of the cosmos
is all of a piece, interwoven and wrapped in
itself and each one of us, formed as we are
of the stuff of this starry and self-conscious coral reef.
Both of us sit here and talk, and you notice
there's nothing between us, no gaps in the atoms,
no break in the fabric, no real separation,
all interconnected like cells in the cortex
or drops in an ocean, we're already touching,
my love.

So whenever the news seems designed to undo you,
or life looks absurd and devoid of direction,
remind yourself sweetly, there is no irrelevance,
is no such thing as a lack of connection,
no failure of logic, no absence of order,
we're all making waves full of light at each other,
all winking hello, from the queens to the quasars,
all learning the dance, fitting into the tapestry,
practicing how to be part of the net, as if
anyone ever did anything else--
it's the reason you're here, just say yes.

Kate Gilpin is an independent editor and writer living on the eastern edge of the San Francisco Bay. She owns Words Into Print, and has over twenty years of editorial experience in a broad range of subjects. Her poetry has appeared in the California State Poetry Quarterly and Blind Donkey. Her current writing centers on her very large dog Steinway and her pugnacious strawberry blond cat Duncan. They are unimpressed.



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