Relativity

"Our love—when we stagger—lies down inside us. . . "
                                                                              ~ Brenda Hillman  


You, too, turn a thing around
and around in your mind,

as if doing so could make 
a question plainer, a problem

easier to solve or shelve.
What is twenty-five

percent of the largest
amount you can think of

to pay the taxman? What is 
the number of years on average

when you didn't have to ransom
lives you brought into the world,

after sending them off with cheers
and confetti? Where are those

pockets in the curved universe
deep enough to slow time,

shallow enough to snap back
after a massive body moves

into another phase of its orbit?
You've always had trouble trying 

to understand the idea of infinity—
that dream of time as a net stretched 

so far in all directions, it ceases to be
time. But orbits made by bodies 

and their mass move differently,  
at different speeds— some slower 

than others, some faster. At any given
time, the moment you look at so longingly 

is no longer even what you imagine, the same
way the earth always seems to be catching

up, pulled toward the last place
it thought was occupied by the sun.