mary-lou-h-s-1

 

There’s Superradiance* 

in the motion of clouds —       concepts spinning
particles     unseen
               and falling,    dark matter’s 
                              steady hum — 

                                                          she lives in memory 
                              now,   communes with cirrocumulus —      today
                              less real          than yesterday’s 
                              still-stirring fires —

                              the gentling 
                              strum of classical guitars,    light and shadow
                              in her palms,       her heart —

                                             night turns time          on its head
                                                             masks the ending 
                                                                              so there was no fall

                                                                                         no darkling core
                                                             just crumbled lake-cliffs rising 
                                             a winter —

Perhaps we need a different discernment 
black holes     where God
divides

time for glide,     friction gone—    planes-of-motion
                             backward/ forward 
                                            flow 

*”Where God/ divides” is a partial quote from the following lines: “Black holes are where / God divides by zero” from Alice Major’s poem “Zero divided by zero,” in Welcome to the Anthropocene (2018), University of Alberta Press, p. 6.

 

Mary Lou Soutar-Hynes is a Toronto-based poet and author of four collections of poetry. Her most recent collections include Any Waking Morning (2019, Inanna Publications) and Dark Water Songs (2013, Inanna Publications).  A 2009 Hawthornden Fellow, her poetry and essays have appeared in journals, anthologies and edited books in Canada and the UK. www.soutarhynes.com

 

To view other content published in this issue, 16:1, please visit Vallum’s website.