Cosmic Rif

Fresh rifts in the roof of the world
Tear rips in its ribs of reefed sails.
Let’s take a picture! Let’s see this!

Hurl this spyglass over the spars
And wink at impossible stars,
The number of explanations

Euphemistically denoted
Duality, this abundance
Of ways this could be what it is.

Dead reckoning. Read the swells.
Tell stories about how and why
Some star fields look like coral clouds

To our eyes. There must surely be
A single, underlying tale,
A most correct, exact account.

Too many damned holes in the night.
That phosphorescence in the waves
Is only the waves, all the waves

Are—shimmering, receding glow
Hinting that we already know
We’re never crossing this ocean,

We’re sailing nothing, we’re nothing
Much but lenses for telescopes
Watching seas sail away from us.