Today's poem is by Martha Silano

When I Can't Get Out of Bed
       

because my cat's snoring beside me, but also not wanting to begin
the work of the day, sink scrubbing and floor sweeping,
saving the bananas from the gnats,

washing the alphabet soup spray from the microwave, I turn to the news:
that the universe "and even ourselves" are holograms,
like those rainbow-y things on our credit cards.

Yes, the entire cosmos and everything in it is a rainbow, and also,
as if that's not enough, scientists can't figure out why
once two subatomic particles have rubbed electric

elbows, they never forget each other, are always in this position
they call super, always heads or tails, in this way forever
besties. The closest thing we have to magic,

one scientist said. Things are weirder than we ever imagined said another,
but when you think about it, it sort of makes sense
we're all the sum total of every atom

we've cavorted with. The other day I watched an irrigation sprinkler
become a rainbow in a hayfield on Best Road. Holograms?
We're a giant hologram? Well, okay,

but I still need to lecture today on the California drought,
on the tipping point, try my best to keep the band
from breaking up.

What do I tell them? That the geese are flying south. That the cat
is not both dead and alive but warm beside me,
curled into a little ball

like a bamboo basket, that she and you and I are all
every color of the rainbow, shimmering in a field
after a drenching rain.

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Copyright © 2024 Martha Silano All rights reserved
from Presence: A Journal of Catholic Poetry
Reprinted by Verse Daily® with permission