I wrote this poem at an Ecopoetry workshop in the Glens Centre last August. My prompt was a line from Amanda Gorman’s poem Earthrise: “Floating like a silver raft in space… “

Thanks to Loretta Brennan of Africa Magazine for finding the marvellous image.

Alone, Together

It is possible that we are alone
in all the quantum flip and spin,
the quark and charm
of the many-stanzaed universe,
the beginning with no beginning,
the grey entropic end.

It is possible that we are alone,
we wrens and salamanders
we spinning sycamore helicopters,
we beluga and narwhal and fungi,
we humans, entangled
with apples and worms and plastic,
with dark matter and black holes,
with fracked shale and feral fires.

It is possible that we are alone, together,
in all the sparkling riptide of stars.