A POEM TO GRAVITY

It is about time the earth remembered us.
You, love, should forget breakfast
—leave it to burn or congeal or grow old with us—
and sing because it is silly morning.
No reason to contend with Donne's
churlish sun. We have curtains.
A poem by Herrick will have to do. Or this one.

I will sing for gravity, neglected
as the hopeless plight of midgets in outer space.

Who else will?

Shuttles could be half the size and use half the fuel.
On Mars man's next small step could be even smaller.
With Leprechaun IV: In Space, Hollywood’s worst
dispensers of straight-to-video dreck
have left NASA in the dark. But, I digress.

Pull the curtains too, rethink the morning—
it is night. Into the hem of my life
tuck your voice as you might your body
in the warm hyperbole of my bed.

Hold me, love me, tie me up and drug me.

Who wants to be un-earthed anyway?

Your belly and knees, your toe and elbow,
they deserve a poem, but it isn't this one, darling.

Take heart, I'll get to them yet.

For now, it's enough to know
apples fall and carelessly bruise
Newton's noggin in our cartoon cosmologies
about this morning
I would equate with heaven
if the sky were not falling
like rain, like leaves, silly simple things like your hair.

ON A POEM TO GRAVITY

A Poem to Gravity has to be one of my favorite poems. It, too, began with a fairly determined goal: to write outright about gravity. I had never realized how often the word gravity popped up in my poems until Rodney Jones went through my manuscript and circled each one. I also wanted to write a sort of twentieth century version of a seventeenth century love poem. John Donne is a touchstone for me and I loved being able to invoke his spirit. At the same time, I loved infusing the poem with all the ridiculous pop culture. This poem along with two others (The Myth of Contentment and Living Underwater) form a kind of trilogy: The Myth of Contentment floats around the moon; A Poem to Gravity is resolutely earth-bound; and lastly, Living Underwater dives into the sea.