Gravitas Poem by Patti Masterman

it's always there
holding on to you like a soured grapeskin
like your fermenting whole your body's glove holding tightly

there it is always
everything in it, like a spinning, holding world
containing all from thought form to cloud,
seaweed to algae

there, the solitary cells
frothed into oceans
and there the molecules, tired of all those
lovesick atoms, attempting to merge

and the raw, gaping singularities there,
smaller than the escaping minutiae of our existence
and the whirling vapors there,
at the undifferentiated edge of darkness
casting elements out of time's foundry

whenever we think they are gone
we disappear first
for matter never grows older
but vanishes again and again

like the first snows of winter
in an antique snow dome
flashing silver wherever the light strikes
and you blink once and then it's gone again

and you can't see it where it went, but it has to be there
hidden behind the little church, with it's thin porous steeple
and the tiny frozen stick figures of people,
dressed in dark suits and dresses

they who fall over one at a time
when their yellowed glue finally gives way
and who are eternally at the funeral of themselves