Anthony Walton

Celestial Mechanics

I have always been the poor
student, failing
geometry and physics,

confusing quadratics
with differentials.
You could explain it, master

of calculus, the night sky
the screen of you overhead
projector as you distinguished

terrestrial from extra-
terrestrial, then sailed
ferocious Orion, south

by southwest,
a forty-five degree angle
off your back step.

Sir Isaac Newton implied, you said,
that it all came down to gravity
and motion; bodies

moving through space will attract
each other. But it is a law
of physics that they must keep

moving. In Newtonian mechanics the stars
are in their courses, grooved
and suspended in space, gravity

pulling bodies toward other bodies
as they themselves are pulled
toward something else.

This is known as balance, equilibrium,
grace. Space is everywhere,
endless and empty,

it both is and contains what we know
of the universe,
and we may safely deduce

that our world is as it should be
as this is how it is.
It is all so simple:

the stars are in their courses, moving
through their fates,
moved by the immutable laws

of gravity and motion that rule
the world,
and it is my fate to be here,

a moving body in motion,
in place, suspended,
balanced, and helpless.

Anthony Walton

Celestial Mechanics first appeared in The Kenyon Review, Winter 1999.

Posted on August 13, 2006 11:22 AM