The last thing I saw

was the streaked
filmy-blue
gazing-ball—merging
with the birdbath
ocean—shrinking to the size
of a rounded thumb held
over a presumptive
moon.

I suppose the shock was
just that I had never seen such—
distanced and backward—before
vaulting—in this jerry-rigged
private rocket—toward
the stars—now, swiftly, much
more than simple
illuminating pinpricks
through—

their deep cloaks—these
soon swelling—surrounding,
infusing me
intensely
with an unknowably rich
darkness.

I guess I
shouldn’t have been surprised
that this omega-dark concealed
sharp colors-of-the-rainbow that,
in edged consort,
swirled
under pressure
around the perimeter of fused vision
of my helpless eyeball-shards—a
chromatic deconstruction—a
blade-distorted prelude
to everything—

everything
rapidly devolving,
fragmenting, miniaturizing,
disappearing
in the sudden inflation
of this vitreous black—this
final, greatest
implosive vacuum.

My mind somehow
remains—now unhurried—behind,
beginning
gradually
to spread out
in the calm, thin salve
of unending—distantly lit (if only
in the “mind’s eye”)—surprisingly
pleasing, if nonetheless
quite formless, space-
time.

Will H. Blackwell, Jr. is a retired professor, botany, Miami University, Ohio, presently living in Tuscaloosa, AL. He has poems in Black Petals, Disturbed Digest, Illumen, Outposts of Beyond, Slant, and Star*Line.

Find more by Will H Blackwell, Jr. in the Author Index.

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