Reionization
“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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