We followed a midday city sidewalk.
She paused, grasped a brass newel that reflected
highrise windows and the sun across the way.
“You must be tired from carrying that box,” I said.
She smiled. “It is heavy,” she said.
At a stoplight, I asked, “Tell me what’s inside the box.”
She said, “When I first opened the lid, I was in October
and the air was cold and clear to the top of the mountain.
But inside the box was black.
Soon, I saw a small blue germ rise from a distant edge.
It became a grain of coral sand,
a happy woman’s eye at dawn. Then it burst
and became hydrogen pumped to life by neutron stars,
a blue sun larger than the eye of a deep sea fish,
the face of a dragonfly,
a grain of coral sand.
I remember most of all the nebula.
Keep that.”
We crossed the street.
“I won’t give it up,” she said.
“I won’t give it up.”
She settled into a cab, the box on her lap.
She carried a universe under green lights,
a sun burning the windows of the city.
