Two Poems, by Larry Thacker

I swim the vacuum 

between your atoms
sing along the dark
mat­tered strands
between galaxies
beyond imagination
wit­ness­ing the base
pat­tern of all worlds
the mys­tery scripts
hang­ing ornamented
about your thoughts
I hum under your feet
with­in the valleys
of fin­ger­print ridges
shrink­ing, expanding
destroy­ing, creating
my laugh and smiles
wrap­ping your world
in scales of D flat major
be still, and know me

Mean­ing 

There are days when every­thing means everything,
polar­ized against oth­ers when all is the frightening
pit of mean­ing­less­ness. Who is immune to the inner
script of the emp­ty end or, on bet­ter days, a hero’s
mys­te­ri­ous sto­ry in a world that screams both
sym­bol­ism and blank­ness as the bit­ter­est of kin.

We must lean in, and we do, and we fail and falter,
some­times emerg­ing slight­ly scathed and hardened
against our sil­ly demons, real­iz­ing how sky quakes,
earth sounds and flock deaths, fish kills, bee plagues
and rivers of snakes and win­ter tor­na­dos are neither
curs­es nor bless­ings, but are just sim­ple questions.