Torricelli Apparatus

“...and this is the wonder that’s keeping the stars apart”

– e. e. cummings, [i carry your heart with me(i carry it in]

I am lonely soon, I imagine you are too.

When we drive together you keep the radio

low to subdue the soundwaves, but we talk

anyway, supplementing the time lost away.

We linger though this is not the first or last

of our goodbyes, but the outer space of spatial

relationship. Later, your plane brings the dim sky

closer to itself, this slow rate over time. Absence

demands I fill your place, remains greedy

and unsatisfied. Consider outer space, a near

perfect vacuum in nature, so you say. Gaseous

pressure stages constellations, heavenly bodies

among waves of light. Stars parse darkness

before they score aircrafts’ backs, bringing

some close, taking you far. You and I relate

to light and sound—both move in space as waves

or not at all, so our movement has its restrictions,

careful definition. Outer space validates our void

and vacant art. Our two bodies separate forget

touch, remember the fact of past pressure only.

I separate space, alternate distance and absence.

To remember is pressure unto itself. Light, sound

waves pass between us. A face onscreen, a voice

reaches me at lightspeed. My inner ear vibrates,

tries to find inside the sine waves your body,

strange search in the dark. Hot air from my long

breath reacts above where I cross your gravel

driveway, contracts, cools. I learned fast never

to look back to the doorway where last I saw you.

If I was lonely then, what now? I say, you mute

the radio so that I won’t sing so loud. This truth

does not crush me, in the background, still

music plays. Sound has no echo in space,

touch demands two objects. I sense another

absence. In my chest, radio waves vibrate.

I drive away from you and sing. Our distance

makes a strange way to be alone, a stranger way

to love—gives us both one atom of air per cubic

meter and says to each, partake, partake. We break,

communing in halves, separate until our vacuum

collapses at last. This event horizon, a vast black

hole, consumes all, even waves of sound and light.

Nature hates a vacuum, surrenders itself to create

from nothing, something, longs to satisfy the void.

Leap

For M.G. and C.P.

Black water as always, but low

for September. Along the rocks

the shore retreats from the water,

now pollen bands like tree rings

display the age of drought. Stones

shine, broken glass. Under my feet,

a boulder radiates noonday heat,

poises me over pond, patient, waits

for me to leap. Minnows, clouds

in schools crowd the tops of trees

to the western shore. And I rock,

a boat tied loose to a dock, prepare

myself to launch at water. A breeze

against bare skin reminds me fall

approaches. Sunlight sails over water

behind the wind, beams on waves

so its sheen mirrors scales of a fish.

I will jump soon. I recall Wetstone

Pond, then, when I cannot jump I cry.

My father by my life vest casts me in,

his swift skipping stone. I fear fall

and fauna, crayfish floating to wire

traps. Once I jumped, but I have fallen

older, my soul swims against my body,

its mesh coils. Now who will seize me?

Who throws me in? Still above Davis

Pond, I see the public pool twelve-feet

deep, and the boulder, my headstone,

another rigid Dover Y diving board,

never gives. Take a breath. That dive

was years ago, that dive is every day.

So now life, timeless deep dive. I wait

to leap, ready to leap, leap—I rise

from the water. Eyes open to graffiti

on the boulder’s side. At eye-level

in red and white, a submarine.