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Flying Apart
Tim Gillespie

All
things expand,

our science
teacher told us,

because the whole
unbounded careless universe is

flying apart while we
think we’re just sitting here.

So after class, that notion
a big bang to my certainties,

I started mulling aspects of my
still world, seeking ways to prove that

not all things are endlessly expanding in
space. Like, um, ice cubes diminish, don’t they?

And my grandmother shrinks a bit each year,
and T-shirts washed in hot water contract… But then

we lost Grandma then my brother, and I had
to finally grant the ceaseless churning boundless growth of grief.

—
Tim Gillespie lives in Portland, Oregon, where the relentless winter drizzle produces lots of rich, gloppy mulch and slippery sidewalks, all conducive to writing poems. A veteran public school teacher of nearly four decades, he embraced the seamless life of writing and teaching writing, both acts informing each other. Recent poems of his have shown up in Windfall, Fireweed, Passager, and Oregon English. MoonPath Press published his 2020 collection Old Stories, Some Not True.

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Have you read these poems:
The Last Ripe Fig by Katharyn Howd Machan
Oh, to Ride Shotgun by Ida Marie Beck

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