Dane Cervine: Holography

Coal country, West Virginia—I walk into a diner,
past the $100,000 reward poster in the window
for the sniper who shot Jeannie at the Speedway.
Our waitress—a poised old dame—
carries herself, effortlessly and without pride,
as the hidden center of a universe, and maybe
like Jeannie, she is, for someone. I open my book,
The Passion of Western Philosophy, wait for eggs,
bacon, biscuits, read about the Copernican revolution—
the earth no longer the center of things,
a peripheral sphere lost on the edge of an endless
black cosmos amid small blazing lights. Maybe
this is what Jeannie’s lover felt—the empty year
reeling out of orbit, no gravity, lost
in a centerless universe blown wide.
Then, like Nietzsche, killing his own god
in the bleak landscape of a world edged
on the abyss. But looking into the waitress’ eyes
as she says thanks hon for the extra tip,
I feel this universe circling back inside me—
Jeannie, her stalking lover, the beating
of a billion galaxies sounding here,
the thump-thump inside this chest,
the aching muscle at the heart of it all.

Copyright 2005 Dane Cervine. Chosen for Honorable Mention – 2nd place by ADRIENNE RICH in the 2005 National Writers Union (Local 7) Contest; subsequently published in the Monterey Poetry Review, and in the book The Jeweled Net of Indra (Plain View Press).