Reading Genesis

Rousing from my slumber

Christmas afternoon on the couch

To contemplate the text

At hand, it is like a dream, words

Caroming about the pages

Like the particles they name, excited

To near madness by that

Naming and the story it tells (ghostlier

Demarcations, keener sounds)

Of how this couch and the cosmos it

Inhabits have come to be,

A universe from the void, the happy

Accidents of a fine-tuned

Physics that we, its unintended progeny,

Comprehend so incompletely

That we cannot name the ninety-five

Percent we can’t see but

Call it dark like magic, an act of faith

In our numbers and in

Ourselves, a priestly vow to holy order

And arrow of time and

Mind that is their product that what is

Can and will be conjured

At length like light from that darkness,

Known and named from

Beginning to the endless sorrow of the end.

12/25/2022