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The Center of the Universe

By P.M. Flynn

Behind,
thick stones are colder, deeper than time emptied,
poured into each moment that passes between clouds
that eventually disappear on the horizon.

Shadows on darkness fall from the mountains:

the sacred moving slower than geologists say,
as we turn to the bright autumn air.

(Clouds fall even in darkness.)

Under each rising sun, when there is no darkness; still—
they've always fallen. When there are shadows they fall again:

today; on the ground with less space for the sun or moon.

Before you left falling behind, before you left falling
from them, sounds always fell behind the horizon:

what is lowest behind each forest;
like trees circling the imperfect edges of me,
fallen;
touched.

There, I hear a voice before I was made, before midnight
when the universe of blue spaces between clouds of importance
closed; space you ran to seeking another new moon, or sun;
or sky with horizons closer to the center of the universe.

In seeking the center,
the blue spaces of universe first;
first:

there is no mountain,
then there is;
then there is no mountain.
(I've heard my heartbeat there.)
Then there is.

If there is darkness, you will know. If there is darkness
in the stillness between shadows falling across these mountains
I already know.