Light Year

Light Year

When I talk about a place, I point,
gesture toward where I think it lives.
Back there, or out and to the left,
there’s no accounting for East or West
in my thumb or index finger, just
a feeling, a vague cloud of magnetic
energy that tugs at my hand.
Everything is close to everything,
relatively speaking. You can get
anywhere on our planet in under
a week. The world keeps collapsing
toward itself, like a sheet being folded
by two people, one on each end,
and folded again. We describe distance
in time: twenty minutes walking,
an hour with the traffic, a four hour
flight, a light year. We are used
to seeing our planet twirl in miniature,
docked on a desk. There is stillness
only when we drop to the ground,
pulling our legs in beneath us
like fingers clasping a palm
in order to become a fist.