Each year is a strange, new land
familiar terrain recedes
as the dense forest of summer
yields to towering rock
a wilder, harsher realm,
more massive, untamable.
This is the real time-travel,
hurtling through a new dimension
where stars are born,
and whirling black holes open.
It pulls us forward
yet unearths no clues
as to what may come after.
The pious say that we leave our bodies
but the truth is the reverse,
they make their exit with tiny, furtive steps
stealing off with the sleek line of a belly,
the vision of an eye.
On the edge of the infinite,
we perform the ultimate balancing act,
never sure if we are hovering over
a well of silence
or a wellspring
of incomprehensible discovery.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Joan Annsfire is a retired librarian who lives in Berkeley, California and writes poetry, memoir, and non-fiction. Her poetry chapbook, “Distant Music” was published by Headmistress Press. Her poetry has appeared most recently in “Rising Phoenix Review,” “Older Queer Women: the Intimacy of Survival,” “Lambert and Einstein” and “9/11: The Fall of American Democracy,” Casey Lawrence,” “Milk and Honey, a Celebration of Jewish Lesbian Poetry,” and “The Other Side of the Postcard,” among others as well as online and in a number of literary journals including, Counterpunch’s Poet’s Basement, Lavender Review, Sinister Wisdom, The 13th Moon, Bridges, and The Harrington Lesbian Literary Quarterly.