James Crews: God Particles

I could almost hear their soft collisions 
on the cold air today, but when I came in,

shed my layers and stood alone by the fire, 
I felt them float toward me like spores

flung far from their source, having crossed 
miles of oceans and fields unknown to most

just to keep my body fixed to its place 
on the earth. Call them God if you must,

these messengers that bring hard evidence 
of what I once was and where I have been—

filling me with bits of stardust, whaleskin, 
goosedown from the pillow where Einstein

once slept, tucked in his cottage in New Jersey, 
dreaming of things I know I’ll never see.

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Copyright ©2017 James Crews. From Telling My Father, winner of the Cowles Poetry Prize from Southeast Missouri State University Press.

James Crews lives on an organic farm with his partner in Shaftsbury, Vermont and teaches in the low-residency MFA program at Eastern Oregon University.