Universal
J Timothy Dotson '93

I followed your countenance
which had changed from light to dark
and from me to him.
I reflected you
like a sorrowful moon in fast eclipse,
already below your horizon -
hanging in the void.
Your world was a different planet
in an elliptical orbit, like an unfaithful comet
that had slipped the bonds of a lesser gravity,
and mated with a force beyond my understanding
and proximity.
I am not part of the stuff of this star,
I no longer know this galaxy.
How does it pale in comparison?
Like east and west, sun and moon
like the distance between you and me.
It is a space of time and a mass of emotion,
an old frontier that precious few can conquer.
A nova, once a bright beacon, has taken the whole system
and flung it across the sky -
the fading nebulous cloud remains.
An ihabitant of the past, I drift here,
another astral remnant
of a broken mortal plane.
Like a black hole, so much is here that nothing remains.


1993 Grand Prize Winner
Arizona State Poetry Society
(wrote it about my divorce in 1992)

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