Elisabeth Graham
Lyric Poem from Carl Sagan to Ann Druyan
When I met you, you could have filled
a planetarium with all you believed in.
I knew you really believed it all, because that day
every single star joined together in constellations
to make billions of brain-maps of every speck
of dust in every record groove, and then galaxies shimmied
with the knowledge that something extraordinary loomed ahead.
In a dream, later, that same night --
you pulled me in for a kiss so tangible
it shook me awake.
Long into the mornings and afternoons after,
I felt the promise of your lips, a secret
alarm clock in my heart, a siren
call to the world beyond, bigger than
every liner note and love letter ever written,
where I can be anything, even with you.
You shake me awake, you make me believe
in hands covered in red ochre reaching out,
making their record-groove finger prints
a permanent fixture of a more beautiful home.
You make me believe there is always more time,
billions of years of it stretching out across
our universe and others’, spinning songs,
to aliens, to us, lightyears away.
When I met you, you could have filled
a planetarium with all you believed in.
I knew you really believed it all, because that day
every single star joined together in constellations
to make billions of brain-maps of every speck
of dust in every record groove, and then galaxies shimmied
with the knowledge that something extraordinary loomed ahead.
In a dream, later, that same night --
you pulled me in for a kiss so tangible
it shook me awake.
Long into the mornings and afternoons after,
I felt the promise of your lips, a secret
alarm clock in my heart, a siren
call to the world beyond, bigger than
every liner note and love letter ever written,
where I can be anything, even with you.
You shake me awake, you make me believe
in hands covered in red ochre reaching out,
making their record-groove finger prints
a permanent fixture of a more beautiful home.
You make me believe there is always more time,
billions of years of it stretching out across
our universe and others’, spinning songs,
to aliens, to us, lightyears away.
Elisabeth Graham (she/hers) is an emerging poet and visual artist based in Boston, Massachusetts. She also performs Shakespeare in basements and writes sci-fi radio dramas for accessible theater collectives. Her work can be found in Redivider Journal.