Event Horizon

*
Event Horizon For an Empire

(An Event Horizon: the point at which all matter and energy flow
irrevocably into a black hole, the point of no return, or, alternately,
a turning point from which reality is diverted somewhere else.)

I swim fast as rain pelts down around me
in a creek teal gray today.
Balmy wind brushes water against gravity.

I swim in the rain, kick through three, quarter-mile laps,
watch the sky create soft rain from a thunderhead small enough
to see completely, then step out determined to remain in steadfast
opposition to an Empire that eats itself and everything it touches,
determined to refuse the despair which spreads like a fire blanket
across history.

I will do one thing differently today, be more effective,
attend a protest, write a letter, boycott Middle Eastern oil and gas,
create action that joins the work millions of people generate for peace,
the environment, gender equality, social and economic justice.

If, at this instant, I see no alternative for the planet
that does not involve the end of capitalism
and can’t yet make that happen, then a break in the day,
a long swim in emerald water, a good night’s sleep,
a mellow glass of red wine, a poem --
these small things must be enough blessing to hold off despair.

I have long been interested in the difference
between one thing and another -- boundaries, the point
at which black is not black anymore, but white,
the turn of a stripe.

Was there an instant when the Age of Reason began?
I choose to resist Empire not because it has, in my lifetime,
appeared the least bit vulnerable to containment,
but because it trivializes life.

I move in the mainstream of a deep paradigm shift
and can’t see the edge.

If scale is the measure of declination, there is no difference
between one thing and another at close range, but one can see the point
of a star against the circle of space through a telescope.

Maybe someone will look back in 500 years and identify one event --
the second indictment against Tom Delay, for instance,
or hurricane Katrina --
as the event horizon of the American Empire.

Or perhaps the concept "500 years" will have no significance --
then.

Possibly history will stop some Tuesday.

If one too many bunker busters cracks the earth apart,
there won’t be any one to ask how much change is enough.

The line of demarcation will exist but "we"
will be the event horizon for a different universe.

But, on the human plane where it is gray "now,"
meaning comes from engagement,

so I go to the post office, bank, sign a petition,
try to get some work done, light a candle for my children, resist oblivion.



*
©copyright, 2005, Susan Bright

Susan Bright is the author of nineteen books of poetry. She is the editor of Plain View Press which since 1975 has published one-hundred-and-fifty books. Her work as a poet, publisher, activist and educator has taken her all over the United States and abroad. Her most recent book, The Layers of Our Seeing, is a collection of poetry, photographs and essays about peace done in collaboration with photographer Alan Pogue and Middle Eastern journalist, Muna Hamzeh.

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