Tonight we're thinking about gravity
The shrinking of distances...
everything exerts
the pull of gravity on everything else
in the universe, like the pull of love leaping
over empty spaces, gaining strength
as mass grows.
Galaxies, stars, planets,
bodies interact, the universe
converses with itself. Everything linked.
Tonight the cosmos swirling and burning
is shrunk to our skull's span
as we look at an Anglo-Saxon manuscript, loving
all interlinkings and complexities.
Take away gravity, and the universe
would explode into vapour! Well, it won't happen;
and we quietly turn again to the manuscript's
knots and plaits and convolutions, with a monster or two
peeping out here and there, like a child's fear of the dark.
Everything linked. Our hands touch,
the sky comes down to us.
everything exerts
the pull of gravity on everything else
in the universe, like the pull of love leaping
over empty spaces, gaining strength
as mass grows.
Galaxies, stars, planets,
bodies interact, the universe
converses with itself. Everything linked.
Tonight the cosmos swirling and burning
is shrunk to our skull's span
as we look at an Anglo-Saxon manuscript, loving
all interlinkings and complexities.
Take away gravity, and the universe
would explode into vapour! Well, it won't happen;
and we quietly turn again to the manuscript's
knots and plaits and convolutions, with a monster or two
peeping out here and there, like a child's fear of the dark.
Everything linked. Our hands touch,
the sky comes down to us.
Daphne Gloag’s background is in medical editing and journalism. Her collection, Diversities of Silence, was published by Brentham Press in 1995. She has published in many magazines and won first prize in the Poetry on the Lake 2001 competition in Italy
Page(s) 48
magazine list
- Features
- zines
- 10th Muse
- 14
- Acumen
- Agenda
- Ambit
- Angel Exhaust
- ARTEMISpoetry
- Atlas
- Blithe Spirit
- Borderlines
- Brando's hat
- Brittle Star
- Candelabrum
- Cannon's Mouth, The
- Chroma
- Coffee House, The
- Dream Catcher
- Equinox
- Erbacce
- Fabric
- Fire
- Floating Bear, The
- French Literary Review, The
- Frogmore Papers, The
- Global Tapestry
- Grosseteste Review
- Homeless Diamonds
- Interpreter's House, The
- Iota
- Journal, The
- Lamport Court
- London Magazine, The
- Magma
- Matchbox
- Matter
- Modern Poetry in Translation
- Monkey Kettle
- Moodswing
- Neon Highway
- New Welsh Review
- North, The
- Oasis
- Obsessed with pipework
- Orbis
- Oxford Poetry
- Painted, spoken
- Paper, The
- Pen Pusher Magazine
- Poetry Cornwall
- Poetry London
- Poetry London (1951)
- Poetry Nation
- Poetry Review, The
- Poetry Salzburg Review
- Poetry Scotland
- Poetry Wales
- Private Tutor
- Purple Patch
- Quarto
- Rain Dog
- Reach Poetry
- Review, The
- Rialto, The
- Second Aeon
- Seventh Quarry, The
- Shearsman
- Smiths Knoll
- Smoke
- South
- Staple
- Strange Faeces
- Tabla Book of New Verse, The
- Thumbscrew
- Tolling Elves
- Ugly Tree, The
- Weyfarers
- Wolf, The
- Yellow Crane, The