Wobble
       

Somewhere untold light years away, a star wobbles,
and an astrophysicist on earth determines that the star
must have a planet, and he estimates how large that planet is,
and how far away it must be from the parent star, then speculates
that it could have an oxygen-based atmosphere, and a habitable
range of temperatures, conditions in which life might potentially
take root and evolve an intelligent species not unlike our own,
one member of which, at this very moment, may have noticed
the slight wobble of our own sun, and posited the existence
of our own solar system, and of the earth, midway in that planetary
array, upon which conditions could be just right to sustain life,
maybe even intelligent life. And while that would certainly be a lot
to conclude based upon the barely perceptible wobble
of an unthinkably distant star, the astrophysicists on both the earth
and that far distant planet would simultaneously feel a smidgen less alone,
knowing that there might, just might be a member of some advanced race
on another planet at the opposite side of the universe gazing back
at him (or her) and entertaining at least the theoretical possibility
of their own existence, and thereby, if not exactly validating that
existence, then making it, in an odd way, more palpable to themselves.
Which is what love also does—that slightest wobble in a heart
(your's, her's) which proves nothing in itself, but which suggests
the possibility that some other being exists, or might possibly exist
at the far edge of your corporeal universe, some undeniably alien,
but intelligent life-form that has just now posited your existence.

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Copyright © 2017 Richard Schiffman All rights reserved
from What the Dust Doesn't Know
Salmon Poetry
Reprinted by Verse Daily® with permission