Event Horizon
San Isidro Parish Hall, Garfield, NM

“When you look into space,
you are looking back through time.“

The wheels on the dirt and gravel
are the only sound as the cars arrive.
The sun blue February sky
is cool forever at the lip
of this place of divergent paths.

“An event horizon is the place at which matter teeters
out of the universe and into a black hole.”

Four boys push out from the back seat
of the ’87 Dodge Colt, and they all turn away
without speaking, like a determined flock,
taking off for the horizon.

“...while earth is our local address,
we have an entire universe to call home.”

The two older boys each carry a .22
crooked familiar over their arms.
The younger ones range out from them
and back, pick up sticks and hurl each one
far, tilting their bodies against the sky and river.
Their backs tell us
they will shoot doves on the ditchbanks,
not notice the yellow stalks of before-
spring fields, the humped banks
where beyond is the sandy river,
not comment on its small grandness,
or whatever pulls the rest of us to gather —
write what must be written.

“Young stars often emit huge jets of primal gasses, including
a curious twisting pattern in a three trillion mile-long specimen.”

The boys know their direction.
The pull may be toward great light
at the edge of their horizon —
a rise of mesquite and creosote.
Their walk, rambling out like newly formed
stars, and it matters not if there is talk or quiet,
away from San Isidro, patron saint of their fathers,
farmers, migrant workers.

I stay behind, a small pulsar blue and wanting,
inside the comfortable walls.
We will spell language,
try out words on one another
because we have lost their power
of quiet, of not noticing our own hands,
or the color of our faces
as we stare across the folding tables.
We don’t want to shoot. We will not be lured
by outside horizons. Our explanations stop us from the edge.

“Not even light can escape its intense gravity;
the bright point at the center is the flare of heated matter.”

I have turned toward a dark hole,
cold and echoing with the sounds
of our own voices. I must write
toward whatever small point of light
is left for me.
I am swallowed away from those boys,
their small hips, their darkness luminous
in white cotton t-shirts,
reflecting the yellow landscape.

“A black hole is 500 million times the mass of our sun.”

But, in this poem,
I step away from the fall of gravity
I have always relied on;
release my small bird body
back to our mediocre sun
and follow an eleven year old with a .22.

(Quotations from William R. Newcott. “Time Exposures,”
National Geographic, Vol 191, No. 4, April 1997.)