The Crux (The Importance of Physics)

by Rosemarie Crisafi



Beyond Mars and Venus
four fires ignited.
Hammer struck nails.
Crossbow burst
over the rivers.
A midnight missile
landed in the flesh
hung over the rivers
a mystery…

Between the Tigris
and Euphrates
wide eyes looked skyward.
In the Mesopotamian night, launched
by a resurrection
a pole stood upright, reaching
across the Sahara.
They knelt to the god
of thunderstorms and light.

A thousand times
around the sun.
Astronomers counted each rotation.
As the top spun, gravity
pulled
on Earth’s belly
until tinseled strands
vanished
under the world.
Beneath Antarctic’s ample white
in a private place
far from the holy sand
that glowed
gold bands hide
having fled
due to something as irrelevant
as physics.
Illuminating a vast icescape
the last words lie silent
beneath the rime.



Copyright © 2005, Rosemarie Crisafi



Crux, the Southern Cross

© 2003 Christopher J. Picking


Rosemarie Crisafi lives in Fishkill, New York. She works in for a non-for-profit agency that serves individuals with disabilities. Her poetry has most recently been published in JMWW, BlazeVox, Tattoo Highway, Lily, Wicked Alice Poetry Journal, elimae, Avatar Review, The SurfaceOnline, Poems Niederngasse, Red River Review, Triplopia, Dirt, Perigee, and Canopic Jar. Other poems have been accepted for future publication in Snow Monkey, Whistling Shade, and ken*again.



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