Degenerate Era of an Expanding Universe

There was the bang
and then this 

bloom. Long falling action.
Each beginning—lip to lip, 

slick birth, blue-red, momentous—
gave way to a succession of meals, hours

at the desk. Only a few 
like this one 

on an evening beach. 
My mother and I 

each hold one of my daughter’s hands.
I don’t touch my mother now,

only the brief embrace upon arrival 
or departure. Not like once. 

But if the years unspool 
in a common pattern I will 

hold her hand again. Sometime 
I’ll cradle her elbow 

steady down a stair.
This year I watched her 

speak slowly and set cut food 
before her own mother. I thought

what wild reversals time makes, 
how we sail out on the far 

sling of orbit, then come close 
again. A red sun

pillows on the surf
that pulls away from us, and

even on a cut stem, 
buds keep opening.