Dark energy by Mark Dunbar

We think that perhaps God is hiding somewhere
in the numbers, spitting out ever more
digits to Pi, that irrational lullaby,

or cooking the energy of empty space
to set the galaxies fleeing,
some anti-gravitational flex,
a billion-year bloom, clue
to the dark power play pushing the stars
apart, red shift ascendant as the need
to know how and why the known universe 
is speeding away, accelerant unknown
though we swim in it by the minute,
by the day,
the immaculate force 
that’s taken the tiller. 

Give me your hands, dear,
your arms.
I’ll braid them with mine—
Never mind the fickle heavens,
the scattering frenzy,
that we have been refined
but only into a paper chain

that we hold up,
praying for wind at dawn.

Mark Dunbar lives in Brookfield, Il. His work has appeared or is forthcoming in Grist, Red Rock Review, Rogue Agent, Corvus Review, Bicoastal Review and the Ekphrastic Review, among others. He attended Kenyon College where he was the recipient of the American Academy of Poets Award.