Dark Energy

“One of the newest, most daring hypotheses, 
is that the explanation lies somewhere weird, near 
yet far: in extra dimensions. As in the land of Narnia . . .” 
—Charles W. Petit, on yet unexplained mysteries of the 
universe,“ Science & Society,” U.S. News and World Report 

Mathematicians say the universe is a leaking wonder
of heat and cold: immense pressures 
sucking and exhaling, not elegant 
as they’d imagined . . . “preposterous.” 
Above our hilled skyline: an indigo fluorescence
lines a vapor trail, man’s faint longevity 
streaking like a mote of stellar dust, 
a sub-atomic comet. As Mars comes visible, 
a random arc in thought 
brings dark horse to mind— 
and the image of black traces against snow 
the winter my father took me to the cutter races,
a hard-packed track sliced by blades 
until ground bled through. 
The winning horse, my father’s favorite, 
was onyx black, eclipsing champions, 
all melodrama and muscled movement. 

Out there, the anti-gravity of dark matter 
ever expands the unknown vast . . . amazing 
and no more amazing than this shadow universe
of nightfall, where reading of dark energy 
after dusk, fifty years (or just moments) 
since those winter races, 
I’ve been pushed back through a narrow tack of time
until what opens out are the small nebulae 
of my father’s frosty breaths 
that rose in a rhythm like my own, 
both of us reddened with excitement and cold, 
the hooves in my heart bearing down too soon 
on the yellow flag of finish.