We may turn and turn again toward the light, but the darkness
passes through us. Earth, they say, and everything on it,
is hurtling (even now as you read this), through a sea
of dark matter, dense and deep, and every second
our bodies are rushed by billions of dark matter particles.
They rush through the jaguar as he stalks and springs.
They rush through us as we eat jellybeans. They rush
through the June bug nibbling on leaves. They rush
through the migrating juncos. The dark, though we
cannot see it nor feel it, it moves through our hands, our spleens,
our teeth. It rushes through ticks on the backs of jackrabbits.
It rushes through jellyfish deep in the sea. It rushes
through jars and cars and clouds. It rushes through jasmine vines,
mountains and trees. The dark matter, it does not rest in us
long enough to make of our bodies a home. But the rush of dark matter
never ends, it’s an infinite stream. It passes through us
as we eat jalapeños or sleep in hammocks or play jacks with our kids.
It matters not, desert, city or jungle. The dark
does not care one whit where we live. Even in daylight,
even by candlelight, even by starlight or campfire glow,
the dark, it passes through us. And sometimes its particles collide
with our atoms. Though we never feel it at all—it’s a mystery,
a secret we’ve yet to decode, a gravity that rules us. Imagine,
the most light we’ve ever known was rushed by dark matter through
and through. Even if you turn toward light, the dark runs through you.
It’s so interesting that this phrase rests in the middle of the poem, almost a caesura, it seems, to me, because the poem rushes and rushes up to it and after it.
“The dark matter, it does not rest in us
long enough to make of our bodies a home…”
Anyway, I like that spot a lot, as it ignites the rest of the poem so well.