Note: Modem scientists agree that a young universe expands, acquiring the shape of an hourglass, while a dying universe contracts, acquiring the shape of a football.
And having stretched itself into a plane,
tightened muscles of a prostrate body,
thriving galaxies of an expanding universe,
functioning cells of a functioning
animal body, it grows heavy with
the weight of fifteen billion years,
heavy with its full belly of planets
and space, heavy with time
and the aching need to relax
clenched muscles. Shoulders
hunching inward, pulling legs
inward, as if to protect itself
from the blue-black sea
surrounding it. Un-arch,
un-flatten, roll back into a ball.
A dying universe, having stretched
its paws as far as possible,
surrenders to itself and gravity and
every cell of its condensing form
returns to a compacted mass. Once
supple skin hardens into an egg-shell,
once functioning frame stiffens
into a bone-white husk once
multi-cellular body condenses into
one cell: one living animal potential
compressed into yolk.
And this cosmic egg
singular and spinning, vibrates
with the combined celestial power
of galaxies, and stars, heating itself
with itself without intending
anything, without requiring
anything, just boiling
with a natural need to burst forth again,
another animal body birthed
into blackness, breaking through
its own enclosure in an explosion of heat,
fire of youth regenerated,
incubated substance shattering
the ivory shell of its parent,
thrashing its body into form and function
and framing its own substance and
claiming its own space, extending itself
thin, eventually flat, eventually
coiling inward, recoiling into
the compacted egg of
another universe.