Before the probe called the internets
made the screen world oh, so virtual
‘primitive’ art had as a regular feature
X-ray vision that could see into bodies

And under water even when it was ice
and through the currents of wind and
water so we look up at the flowing sky
and down at all the wriggling black ants

So far below this waning moon in that
morning horizon thin pale shimmering
wafer that just shouldn’t be there at all
when the current age belongs ever solar

The Earth at Night electric beaming light
as brightness of an accelerating universe
a vast and even greater mystery in dark
enveloping veil through which we can see:

From here to there and then back again
the other side of everything made visible.

 

James Van Looy has been a fixture in Boston’s poetry venues since the 1970s. He is a member of Cosmic Spelunker Theater and has run poetry workshops for Boston area homeless people at Pine Street Inn and St. Francis House since 1992. Van Looy leads the Labyrinth Creative Movement Workshop, which his Labyrinth titled poems are based on. His work appears weekly in Oddball Magazine.