THIS WAS NOT WRITTEN WITH HUMBLE INTENT

I
my Love,
they say that our universe is expanding
Mine and Yours and theirs
and OURS.

II
trillions of years ago
before insects, before dust, before the first click of a tongue from the first mouth,
Everything- planets, and suns, money and pain, dictionaries and pornos and the cosmic dust that would combine to create you- was packed tightly together
like an endless jigsaw puzzle
                             with more pieces than there are numbers to count them all

         and then, for some unknown reason:
an outward Explosion! with the raw violence
of an orgasm between Hiroshima and Nagasaki
                                       times a million to the millionth power
so much force that everything is still reeling from the explosion today
they say that Everything we know of
                   began at that moment.

III
they proved that the universe is expanding with the doppler effect
         red shift
the light reflected by traveling spectral bodies
         shifts to the red end of the spectrum when they’re moving away from you
                             and to the blue end when they’re coming closer
         BLUE shift

as they proved that the universe is getting larger
         they also proved that the expansion is slowing down
now, some people think that eventually the universe will stop
         like a chest at its zenith of inhale
at that moment, everything that once was red will shift to BLUE
         in a process that might occur during the millions of years it takes
for the eye of the universe
                                       to blink.

IV
At that point, they say,
         everything will reverse,
begin a slow, gravity-fed descent inward
and the universe will fall into itself
like a frightened child contracting into the fetus position
planets and galaxies will come crashing together
         entire planes upon which to exist will crumple and compress
                   as everything grinds inward

EVENTUALLY to the power of eventually,
         Everything! Everywhere! and Everyone there
will have come to a single point
the entire weight of the universe will reside in a single package
the size of a human fist
the size of My fist
                                                 the size of YOUR fist
and then?

they say another explosion might occur
         the universe could be reborn
as Everything streams endlessly outward, forming

new
patterns,
new
elements,
new
chemicals,
new
Life!

they Say

that every particle of everything that once was
         might Realign and Recombine into something
                   NEW and
                   BEAUTIFUL and
                   Different.

V
so, my Love, if everything we’ve ever known started at the big bang-
         what came before, and what comes after? and-
if over trillions of years,
         the universe continues to expand and contract,
                   like a MONOLITHIC HEART,
                             like the frantic butterfly beats of a blushing fifteen year old
                                       after her first kiss, expanded in time to near eternities,
                                                 then, To Whom Does This Heart Belong?

everywhere is a strange place
         where things like specks of dust become beautiful
when stacked in numbers so large the zeros go on forever

When will I see You again?
When will I love You again?
no one knows

Over the span of countless upon impossibly countless eternities
         WE have loved one another
                   In Different Bodies
                   In Different Times
                   IN DIFFERENT WORLDS

when I was a tree, You became the otter whose home was my belly, a nest from my flesh
when You were the sunshine, I became dust motes and danced within you, incandescent, immaculate
when I was the rock, You became the worms curled in wetly beneath me, like egg-white corkscrews, braided tightly into the wet, black earth

Who can know when I will meet you again?
                                       Love you again?
                             when I will write this, for you, once more?

all I know is this:
                   and I know it in the way that a new mother
                             sweat mingling with the tears in her eyes
                                       and gasping as she brings new Life into this world
                                                 KNOWS that she will
                   always
                                                 Love Her Child

with all of the knowledge that IS and isn’t mine, all I know is this:

         as surely as all of the infinities are vast enough to preclude it,

We Will NEVER Have A Last Word