Ernest Rutherford found that the atom is mostly empty space—Britannica.com
The human body is 99% empty space –Rosie McCall, IFLScience
All that space within us, between our electrons.
The somersault of my mind as it tries
yet fails to comprehend such emptiness. A void that’s never still—
its vibration, excitation like waves of turbulent air.
Within my body, within that space, there’s surely more
than emptiness. One moment an ink stain of greed
weeps through it, and then without warning, tenderness
settles in. A fledgling leaps, wobbles, lands safely in the hedge.
Strange, how the dream I had last night, the one
I’d nearly forgotten, returns to fill the vacancy.
Wind whips around the rooftop. It moans.
I am hollow, my ignorance gnaws at me.
Do remnants of past lives spill through us,
invisible, kinetic? Is that what makes us human?
All that space within us—like the darkness between stars,
limitless, unknowable, embracing infinite points of light.
Ginny Lowe Connors is the author of six poetry collections, the most recent of which is White Sail at Midnight. Connors runs a small poetry press, Grayson Books.
