Once in a trillion years

the muse of universes

claps her hands. And, with that shock

of light, reverses

an aeon of drift, dilution,

the outward-rolling wave

of dark and the illusion

of end times.

A new draft, she orders

and the universe erupts

into rhyme, fields and forces

echoing. She rebuts

formlessness, sparks stanzas

from an alphabet of particles,

spells out what matters, what

radiates, what tickles

the fancy into galaxies

with gravity’s feather pen.

She unrolls the scroll of space,

says, There. Now try again.

by Alice Major, from “Standard Candles,” University of Alberta Press