It’s All Gravy

a gravy with little brown specks       
a gravy from the juices in a pan

the pan you could have dumped in the sink
now a carnival of flavor waiting to be scraped 

loosened with splashes of milk of water of wine
let it cook let it thicken let it be spooned or poured

over bird over bovine over swine
the gravy of the cosmos bubbling

beside the resting now lifted to the table 
gravy like an ongoing conversation    

Uncle Benny’s pork-pie hat    
a child’s peculiar way of saying emergency  

seamlessly     with sides of potato of carrot of corn
seamlessly     while each door handle sings its own song

while giant cicadas ricochet off cycads and jellyfish sting
a gravy like the ether they swore the planets swam through

luminiferous    millions of times less dense than air       
ubiquitous        impossible to define a gravy like the God

Newton paid respect to when he argued 
that to keep it all in balance to keep it from collapsing

to keep all the stars and planets from colliding
sometimes He had to intervene

a benevolent meddling like the hand 
that stirs and stirs as the liquid steams

obvious and simple     everything and nothing
my gravy your gravy our gravy     the cosmological constant’s 

glutinous gravy      an iridescent and variably pulsing gravy    
the gravy of implosion     a dying-that-births-dueodenoms gravy  

gravy of doulas of dictionaries and of gold 
the hand stirs     the liquid steams 

and we heap the groaning platter with glistening
the celestial chef looking on as we lift our plates

lick them like a cat come back from a heavenly spin
because there is oxygen in our blood

because there is calcium in our bones   
because all of us were cooked

in the gleaming Viking range
of the stars