Reionization

Eugenia Leigh

         “About 13.8 billion years ago, just 400,000 years or so after the big bang,

         the universe abruptly went dark. … Eventually this fog would lift,

         but how it did so is a question that has long baffled astronomers.”

                   — Scientific American, Volume 310, Issue 4 (March 2014)

Not long after the big bang —

         God’s first holy call and response —

                   the universe went dark.

                   All that hot bliss of brilliance

         shut inside a tomb. God

second-guessing

both Let there be and light.

         We know how the power went out:

                   the cosmos cooled, then birthed

                  hydrogen, which swallowed the glow.

         The name for that switching off of spark:

recombination.          Depression. Grief.

But we don’t yet know

         how the power returned.

                   One theory imagines the first stars

                   banded together, and their tenacious light

         knifed the dark apart: reionization.

Resurrection.          It’s possible, then,

if we believe our astronomers and angels,

         that our abyss is temporary —

                   that a young soprano of stars

                                   gathers now on the other side

                                   to sing the crucified to life.

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