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Scott Edward Anderson

  

Redshifting

Everything, even size, is a human value... miniature is vast in its way.
                                                                  — Gaston Bachelard

A crow makes its call from a distant tree,
rain soaking the meadow, soaking the earth.

Say that surfacing on the wind is as an oak leaf
cutting through air—

The way the universe expands in space-time,
with little regard for the matter in its way—

A star in the night sky redshifting (did you see it?)
as the eye adjusts, from blue to green to yellow to red.

An object radiates light, moving away from us,
lightwaves becoming longer, less energetic,

red heart pulsing, wavelength of lower frequency
then blue heart, pulsing out longing—

The crow flies overhead, cawing, its frequency,
its pitch, becoming higher when approaching,

then lower, longer, as it passes, until distance
makes the heart's pitch lower, too, with absence.

Absence being a lower frequency than presence—
Say that the heart redshifts down

as it reflects light, distance being
the time it takes love to travel from star to star,

lover to loved. Love is not a vacuum,
it has waves that bend with its expansion,

the heart is as that red star in a field
of blue; we cannot know its origin or

its destination—but if we think about that place,
or that absence, we are already there

redshifting through the distance of space-time or
blueshifting, where frequency and proximity collide.

  

  

Shapeshifting

When young Dawn with her rose-red fingers shone once more…
                                                                  — Homer

Give the night back to the night,
the stars back to the sky—

Give the earth, spinning in space,
back to the earth—

  
(the stars look black tonight)
  

Give the moon, no, keep the moon,
it is the stars we want to give back—

Give the soil back to the isopod
emerging to the surface

(what is it looking for?)
  

Give the Dawn back her rose-red fingers,
she needs them more than the night.

Give the bluejay back his morning,
taken from him by the chickadee—

(sounds are deeper in solitude)

Give back to the sunshine
what darkness is his—

Give back to the night
what light is hers—

(stars, moon, clouds—)

Shape-shifting: bluejay into chickadee
into bluejay, night into day

into—what?

("harassed unrest"?)
  

Give back to the earth what is hers,
she will forgive you for taking it

or she will turn into a wolf.

   

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