On the Nature of Space Travel (Light Delivered)

on the nature of space travel (light delivered)


she asked if he believed in aliens
with soft flesh he asked & machines

(she writes codes for applications
tells the angels she is afraid of miracles)

no—he says not wanting to be glib
or dismissive
the speed of light is
one hundred eighty six thousand

miles per second—per second
& the closest star system
is four point three seven light years away
forty one point five

trillion miles away—Eridani is the closest star
known to have a planet
it is ten point five light years away—
more than a hundred trillion miles away

(she cannot sleep at night so she naps
in the day dreaming of poems she cannot
remember feeding grackles cubes of her flesh
even as the starlings starve)

& the light we see from the stars is all
in the past—old light— the mechanics
of distance creates doubt that UFOs
are ships even piloted by machine

(o the boredom—the boredom—asleep
for tens of thousands of
years only to show up at a place
that may not even be)

our fastest achieved speed is approximately
forty thousand miles per hour equaling
about eleven miles per second

but let us remember that in quantum mechanics
(how she leaves her body to float alone)

how separated atoms can communicate
at great distances—incredible ones

transferring information
in a seeming vacuum

(what seams stitch
& unstitch loss)

& the possibility
of parallel

universes one
microsecond away

the energy it takes to move
a single atom into a separate time

(how would you know oblivion if you saw it
a woman walking in a mist with her eyes
swollen her face blue)

how wormholes may exist but how to move
a machine (how many atoms)
how to withstand the gravitational forces
or pick the location in which you drop

(she eats too much & cannot get far enough
away from all those numbers—hours years)
perhaps she says they sent out nanomachines

that built larger machines on arrival

we look into the past—remember—how would
they know which star to choose to
develop the technology—to pick a star—
to see us before we were already gone

(she calculates the arc of a trajectory
that will never decay
pushes the hair from her face
& watches a child fall)

what can travel at the speed of light
but light itself
were some consciousness to develop—become

a light—conscious light—time does not
exist at the speed of light he says

a consciousness of light—if
UFOs are, they are light

balls of light
dreaming

from one end of a universe
to another & across & thru &

yes he says a quantum light consciousness
is not only possible but likely
the only means

& is it alien—no (she says i must believe
& he sees her close enough to want the light
to come—to be—home)

* * *


or how she orders a bowl of soup
& a mini-loaf of rustic bread

(how they call a loaf
of bread rustic)

the clouds have
dropped

(afraid of
heaven)

how his cuts
are superficial

the harder damage to
the deeply hidden heart

& even then one imagines
some thing blocked—a thin

layer of cells pierced by a thinner
layer—an onion tissue tiny tear & all

the blood goes pouring out & the waiter
calls his manager & she calls an ambulance

was it oxtail or French onion or how they used
the proper form of address
& it is all about presentation

funny how it all fits when it no longer matters
the tines
like fingers
like lightning
like the clouds falling
the steam enfolding silver

once a woman told her that she needed to be
less obscure & how she thought
it was plain enough what it was

or if you remember that it is all remembered
the rust of a ghost pulling apart a loaf

of skin & fat the scraps of time
tossed toward a black hole

a napkin & one thin mint
one thin sheaf of gold;

Monty P & the Wrestler meet H. Heisenberg
to swell to press against dreams
of limitations

* * *

(ones & zeros added or subtracted
the location of X on multiples
of Y as in a voice X goes
out—swells & each
individual ear Y
receives X
as XY
but

is ear Y1
the same as Y2
of course not he says
but is X only X & not X1~
or does Wittgenstein pull heaven down
one heaven at a time one moment being sewn
as if they were beads floating
on a long glass rope
or how one can be only one or zero—
this is the moment—
the moment—not in the plural—
no moments—but only this long one)

swelling—already flat against it—
or how we say
change proves the existence of the plural—
birds—you me—this ocean—that star
sophistry or imagine a world
without seams & this is
that world this time
joined—radiant
in its swell;

swollen eyes round the line: bad math


Richard Lance Williams

Posted over on More Poetry