Stardust: A Thought Experiment, by Charlie Brice

Photo by Jeremy Thomas on Unsplash

Physicists tell us that we’re made
of the same matter as stars and planets.
Some philosophers argue that, because
we are made of the starry stuff,
we behave in the same determined
manner as celestial bodies.

Wouldn’t it be nice if that were true?

All our orbits would be symmetrical,
our trajectories aimed only at destinations
that were predetermined. Very few random
events would plague our lives, and those
that did would be easily traced—explanations
would be apparent and sensical.

Our endings would be as grand as an exploding
star—our deaths would blazon the universe
like a supernova. We’d become an event horizon
that gathers light—our legacy a powerful singularity.

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Charlie Brice won the 2020 Field Guide Poetry Magazine Poetry Contest and placed third in the 2021 Allen Ginsberg Poetry Prize. His fifth full-length poetry collection is The Ventriloquist (WordTech Editions, 2022). His poetry has been nominated twice for the Best of Net Anthology and three times for a Pushcart Prize and has appeared in Atlanta Review, The Honest Ulsterman, Ibbetson Street, The Paterson Literary Review, Impspired Magazine, Muddy River Poetry Review, and elsewhere.