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The book The House of the World has been nominated for the Pulitzer Prize and is now available on Amazon.

Records

They say everything is recorded.
Every birth certificate,
thought,
wave on the shore,
a woman’s hand touching her child’s face,
atoms dancing on the head of a pin.
My forgotten list of things to do,
minutiae and the explosion of stars,
the Sistine Chapel and paint
that fell to the floor.

And why?
Why does the universe
pile up ledgers of things that happened,
should have happened,
parallel universes,
and universes so thin,
atoms fall through them?
I don’t know and it’s not telling.
But perhaps it’s a kind of eternity,
of life,
of reverence for the important.
The love between parents and children.
The bond between friends.
The poem that listens and tells.

So it means,
or seems to mean,
the universe has a soul.
Not a bookkeeper,
but a non-judgmental heart
that wants nothing to end,
and infinite new beginnings.
As if it can’t get enough of love,
and never throws away its tears.

Published inIndex of all Poems