Cosmos: A Poem

Membrane Theory

58 MEMBRANE THEORY Theorists describe spacetime as a mathematical surface, comprising all dimensions in a single topology. I think of this, walking by the Eno, as wave-lines and arcs of rippling weave in uncountable crossings, between the near screen of briars and the opposite shore. The current pulses beside me, its intersecting patterns translucent, like grape pulp. Then again I unfold more of the path through my eyes into memory, subliminally aware of the sensation of effort, as associations flow in an undertone of feeling. As I add new scenes to this topography, I see a slender, nerve-silver water that threads above bottom-land pebbles, in this riverside, much-folded cortex of earth. The terrain holds paths like a roadmap, connecting me with streets in Durham and Raleigh and Dunn and Kenly, and those spinning out, into ways in Vienna, or Rome. My time and space hold cobblestone impressions, the sedimented Tiber under the Bridge of Angels associating with the Eno’s high water. So love is connecting with another, in those other spaces, like learning a foreign country, which is humanly the same, though part of a differently shaped continent. My wife and I felt young again in Rome. Thinking so, I have wound the path, up from the river and on through the pine wood, where later the owls will call, where sometimes the pileated woodpecker knocks and squawks. Farther, one name-chiseled headstone marks the site of other, found-stone graves—some sunken-in, man-long, or shorter—some, the sizes of infants. Near the chimney-pile of a vanished cabin, jonquils in green-finger fronds try the February wind. ...