Driving to the Stardust Buffet
by Richard Pflum
I remember the tick of the beginning,
now hear the tock of the continuing,
and from between the tock and the tick,
a more rhythmic pounding of the nothing.
I have gone out to gather in my sustenance:
some ions, neutral atoms, many neutrons and
protons with a limited number of quarks and
the rare and very small boson. Electrons and
positrons have been combined into rich sauces
and beside them are the colorful and sparkling quanta,
garnished with neutrinos. It is all laid out on
a black presentation board on a counter top:
this stuff I am and need, things some stars
no longer have any use for.
Still, I feel sometimes that I am a byproduct of
some other more generous nature as I drive into
the parking lot, very crowded now with its
rolling ambience of charged bodies blinking
their lights on and off as a crowd awaits beside
the event horizon gate and a doorman, liveried
with the letter “G,” presses the button,
allows all without, inside.
Bio: Richard Pflum is a native of and now lives in Indianapolis. He is the author of three full-length books of poetry, A Dream of Salt (The Fredrick Brewer Press, now The Raintree Press, Bloomington, Ind., 1980), A Strange Juxtaposition of Parts (The Writers’ Center Press, Indianapolis, 1995), and Some Poems to Be Read Out Loud (Chatter House Press, Indianapolis, 2013). He has appeared in Tears in the Fence (U.K.), The Flying Island, The Reaper, Exquisite Corpse, PlopLop, Hopewell Review, and Kayak. He also has a poems in the anthologies The Indiana Experience (Indiana University Press, 1977) and A New Geography of Poets (University of Arkansas Press, 1992), and two poems in The New Laurel Review (1999), and a poem in Glass Works (Pudding House, 2002). On the Internet, he can be found on the archive of PoetryNet, Poet of the Month, October 2003. He is the host of Evening With the Muse, a monthly reading and open mic of the Indiana Writers Center.
by Richard Pflum
I remember the tick of the beginning,
now hear the tock of the continuing,
and from between the tock and the tick,
a more rhythmic pounding of the nothing.
I have gone out to gather in my sustenance:
some ions, neutral atoms, many neutrons and
protons with a limited number of quarks and
the rare and very small boson. Electrons and
positrons have been combined into rich sauces
and beside them are the colorful and sparkling quanta,
garnished with neutrinos. It is all laid out on
a black presentation board on a counter top:
this stuff I am and need, things some stars
no longer have any use for.
Still, I feel sometimes that I am a byproduct of
some other more generous nature as I drive into
the parking lot, very crowded now with its
rolling ambience of charged bodies blinking
their lights on and off as a crowd awaits beside
the event horizon gate and a doorman, liveried
with the letter “G,” presses the button,
allows all without, inside.
Bio: Richard Pflum is a native of and now lives in Indianapolis. He is the author of three full-length books of poetry, A Dream of Salt (The Fredrick Brewer Press, now The Raintree Press, Bloomington, Ind., 1980), A Strange Juxtaposition of Parts (The Writers’ Center Press, Indianapolis, 1995), and Some Poems to Be Read Out Loud (Chatter House Press, Indianapolis, 2013). He has appeared in Tears in the Fence (U.K.), The Flying Island, The Reaper, Exquisite Corpse, PlopLop, Hopewell Review, and Kayak. He also has a poems in the anthologies The Indiana Experience (Indiana University Press, 1977) and A New Geography of Poets (University of Arkansas Press, 1992), and two poems in The New Laurel Review (1999), and a poem in Glass Works (Pudding House, 2002). On the Internet, he can be found on the archive of PoetryNet, Poet of the Month, October 2003. He is the host of Evening With the Muse, a monthly reading and open mic of the Indiana Writers Center.