Free Fall; a poem

    Free Fall
    (for my son)

    I am no physicist to comprehend
    the forces that hold the cosmos
    from flying apart. My God is
    the God of small and fragile things,
    of memory, of laying down in a cold,
    wet field waiting for the meteors to streak
    across a pre-dawn sky, your astronaut
    body still tethered to mine.  Much later,
    your confident voice reciting the names
    of all the planets that ring the sun
    in their precise order.

    You always worked hard to categorize
    things--dinosaurs, trains, books,
    beanie babies--as meticulous
    as any scientist.  Now you study
    your own fault lines, watch the cracks
    spider across what was once solid earth.

    Darkness circles you, creates its own
    artificial gravity like an invisible
    satellite astronomers cannot map,
    only measure its influence by tidal
    flow or the way your orbit
    is knocked from its trajectory.

--ljcohen, October 2011