Susan Goldwitz

Susan Goldwitz’s poems have been widely published in journals and anthologies, and the manuscript of her book of poems, Dreams of the Hand, won an Academy of American Poets Award. She is especially interested in the creative intersection of visual and written expression and has worked as a fine art curator as well as a teacher of literature.

The Dance of the Unraveling Galaxy

As the boundless, borderless spiral
conceived in the curve of distance and darkness
swirls and churns on its pointless thole,*

Its black hole stirs and yawns,
fasting until some time declares
it's come time to absorb Time
and Space is ready to be engorged.

And then it groans and twists and sucks,
pulling everything, Everything, into itself
to become more of itself, of its own emptiness -
in an indescribable, impersonal undertaking
of catastrophic accumulation and abandon.


*thole: a wooden or metal pin set in a gunwale of a boat
to serve as a fixed rest for an oar in rowing