blueberries (the uncertain quality of light)

the light explodes across ultra & 8 minutes--
8 thousand trillion more,
charges out to flare the biggest wheel, uncertain truth,
and burns chlorophyll to feed the bush like a flashbulb

the great grope in the dark for more than is there
compels dissemination oblately
and the deep blue of the what if machine chugs
dry air into a tiny city on a leaf.
a globe on a stem spins off into my hand.

in the city my perilous love song goes unanswered,
it plays in empty rooms and people turn on their radios
as they slip quietly out of cars
so that it may defeat itself in silence--
junkyard boomboxes blare it
from garbage barges on their way out,
but the only thing that hears it is mostly water...

somewhere between all this light, water...
i'm alone and free and alone and free
and all the cool sweet froze over--
something i could see in your eyes caught me with blue.
your heart escapes me triumphant with closed ghosts, but
you once said everyone is already dead
and i didn't call you a nihilist.

instead months later i'm in the field picking
blueberries for you...
the globe falls past the cut plastic rim of a maine spring.