It’s been a long time since I’ve had time, let alone will, to sit and draft a poem. Let’s credit this one to intolerable psychic pressure and leave it at that. Thankfully, only that part of the poem is true.
Eve of the Empty Apocalypse
We've turned away from the sun; In the East, the Rocky Mountains loom, their tallest painted purest white. They say these, too, will shake apart or crumble down to dust. I leave, driving east, hoping to slip between the mountains before the lunar oracle proclaims their doom, instructs their snowy crowns to haunt the valley. And if I'm never seen again, oh well, I'll any some day break in their abyss, so why not now? And seal our final argument, which conjured Christ and Sartre, Camus, Prince, my father, and the Buddha. And yet I keptEverett'sSchrodinger's secret safe, galvanized|encouraged by my squinting son, who's blue eyed smile says, "Bye-bye," to prophecy that I'll return with certainty so perfect that it quakes the ancient church across the street. I feel its stone walls leaning, I bear its weight, but no meaning, and burn what scion faith I can't refute.
Notes
Two things I know I don’t like: the imprecision/abstraction of the final line, and the fact that “Eve” is only implicitly in the poem.
I originally had “Schrodinger” instead of “Everett”, which has a better poetic ring to it, and is probably less obscure, but I couldn’t tolerate the knowledge that Schrodinger didn’t necessarily endorse literal conclusions from his famous thought experiment. If I can be corrected here, I’d be thrilled to change it back.
Wait… didn’t endorse *which* conclusion. Schrodinger certainly thought enough of his conclusions that he felt it refuted the Copenhagen Interpretation. But I would go with Schrodinger just for the reasons of sound and because it will give many more readers a clue. If I hadn’t spent many hours reading lay physics books and too many days researching the (mis)application of scientific hypotheses as metaphors, I would have NO idea who Everett was.