While I wait

While I wait in the ICU for him to wake, I think about oblivion. 

I think oblivion is only one interpretation, the earthling one. 

The notion of beginnings and endings--a human obsession--important 

for hunting and farming, for invention, for winning, for all human endeavors, 

for the purpose of living on earth without anxiety.  

I think about continuity, the cosmos as hyper-vast web of pulsing 

strings, of interwoven layers of shapes (the bacilli inside him,

my husband, the bed, window, clouds, stars, quasars, black holes) 

in perpetual motion.

While waiting in the ICU, I think about the cosmos expanding.  

The galaxies to my earth eye seem as blooms of light, lanterns 

flashing in the dark, white skin between black holes of fishnet stockings, 

silver fish darting in midnight water, until we look closer, 

deeper into their patterns, down to the layer of atoms and sub-atoms 

where the sublime gossamer scaffolding of air, water, fish, pebbles, 

leaves fan out into an eternity of almighty light and dark--

galactic and infinitesimal. 

Here in the ICU, I wait in a state of bewilderment 

as I consider sizes, distances, spheres, layers, nettings, flashings, 

burstings, orbitings of this beatific and frightening order 

that repeatedly assembles and reassembles.