Prediction of Anti-Matter

         Lauren Camp

 

Eating the gladly we glee to continue.

Across the garden, sunflowers grin at us.

We sigh beside the yarrow. Singing crickets.

Summer stems to cocktail. Long we look at vines.

The warmed dog leans on his front paws.

Buoyant clouds in tranced lingering.

I watch her husband pet his beard and C unbuckle

sandals, dip a hunk into a dip.

We feel forever today and in the midst of it

—when a smash combusts the air and muscles

through us : we careen the kitchen and front

door : jerky, sudden: glass brittles the yard and yard

is in their cactus where a white truck knifed

the oak tree and their Camry into flat lines : mangled

angles: I stand beneath flipped leaves

along which the stupid gentle finches plunge

and rise : C attacks the pavement in her flippy

sandals racing for the teen who crushed her car—

but I can’t stop thinking now what matters is this

was racing C before her cancer, nimble C

crosshatching the suburban street.

Before doctors opened, cinched then spliced her flesh

a third time to solve the unsolvable tumor.

It’s true she caught him, but so what?

I’ve thought so much on this these dozen years

and what I’ve figured is the noise we heard

was time which gifted us its deliberate little symmetry.

A small gathering. Nothing was

forward farther until every wrought

minute of it, the start of the opposite charge.