Dark Matter and Dark Energy by Alicia Ostriker

View this email on a browser Forward to a friend March 13, 2015   Dark Matter and Dark Energy   Alicia Ostriker

My husband says dark matter is a reality not just some theory invented by adolescent computers he can prove it exists and is everywhere   forming invisible haloes around everything and somehow because of gravity holding everything loosely together   the way a child wants to escape its parents and doesn’t want to—what’s that— we don’t know what it is but we know it is real   the way our mothers and fathers fondly angrily followed fixed orbits around each other like mice on a track   the way every human and every atom rushes through space wrapped in its invisible halo, this big shadow—that’s dark dark matter   sweetheart, while the galaxies in the wealth of their ferocious protective bubbles stare at each other   unable to cease proudly receding            Copyright © 2015 by Alicia Ostriker. Used with permission of the author. About This Poem   “I am married to an astrophysicist who recently published a book on dark matter and dark energy, the manuscript of which I read more than once. The poem plays with the idea that we, like cosmic bodies, are surrounded by invisibly clinging haloes of strange particles, and are subject to forces we cannot understand that drive us apart.” —Alicia Ostriker   Alicia Ostriker is the author of The Old Woman, the Tulip, and the Dog (University of Pittsburgh Press, 2014).  She is a Chancellor of the Academy of American Poets and teaches in the Drew University low-residency MFA program in poetry and poetry in translation in New Jersey.   Photo credit: J. P. Ostriker Most Recent Book by Ostriker   The Old Woman, the Tulip, and the Dog (University of Pittsburgh Press, 2014) "Dangerous Astronomy" by Sherman Alexie "The Sciences Sing a Lullabye" by Albert Goldbarth "Catastrophe Theory II" by Mary Jo Bang Poem-a-Day   Launched during National Poetry Month in 2006, Poem-a-Day features new and previously unpublished poems by contemporary poets on weekdays and classic poems on weekends. Thanks for being a part of the Academy of American Poets community. To learn about other programs, including National Poetry Month, Poem in Your Pocket Day, the annual Poets Forum, and more, visit Poets.org.   You are receiving this e-mail because you elected to subscribe to our mailing list. If you would like to unsubscribe, please click here.   © Academy of American Poets 75 Maiden Lane, Suite 901, New York, NY 10038