Parking Lot Knowledge

 

I walked through tall weeds

to the unpaved parking lot

to get my notebook and feel

the sun of the late morning.

 

Standing near the old blue van

I raised my head

to the sky as I stood

balanced on the hard-packed earth.

 

I let the sun’s rays shine

through me. I could feel that

these expansive rays

continued on, after warming my

still dozing muscles,

like neutrinos rushing at the earth,

passing through without even

nicking an electron or a quark.

 

And this sun at wide angle to

the morning horizon in divine

silence kept, in its Einsteinian

speed of hot light, pulsing through

the crust of the earth, the layers

of nickel, aluminum, raw iron--

through the lava of the earth’s

centrifugal heart and out to the

dark side of the cosmic night

and on and on to the unfathomable

infinities of heavenly bodies in

the airless womb of space.

 

Moving out of the sun’s untempered

but kindly stare, I opened the van

door and retrieved my notebook.

As I turned my back to the great

light of the sky, I know I shared untold

photons with the oceans on the

backside of the world and on to

the unseen constellations beyond

the edge of thought.

 

September 2, 2011

Taos , New Mexico