The Light Within Earshot at the Gas Station Snack Bar
Our oldest light goes by the name cosmic
microwave background radiation—
CMB for short. She's everywhere:
fluorescent birdsong of modern offices,
hum of corner store ice cream cases.
Have you heard of her? This gal was born
screaming into freedom from the expansion
of a bang so big we're still talking about it.
Expelled from the recombination's gender-
less cervix, before there were names for things
like body, or heat, or quiet. She slid through
the pitch of first dark, not yet sure what
edges were, dragging the weight of a beginning
behind, shelter for and shedding of photons
loosened from a fire she didn't start.
Somewhere in this thirteen-billion-year drift
her lips kissed the eyelids of stars that hadn’t
learned to die yet, passed the chubby fists
of planets still cooling in their cribs. Fell into gravity
wells, bent her spine around a gape of black holes,
and climbed back up again, tired but full.
We call her background now, like she's an afterthought,
the hum of hums beneath the humming—we call her 'it'.
Add a T to her beginning and we might as well
call her mother. And when she reaches us, frail
and stretched thin, we catch her in our instruments
(where we found her), our desperate, outstretched hands.
For our effort, like a good genie enduring a bad rub,
she tells the story of our origin from a certain point—
then distracts us with tricks when we ask her about
the end of it.
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