In the Absence of Walls

As they lie beside the abandoned airstrip,
looking up, the sparrows settle down for the night
in skeletons of planes that used to carry men
high enough to make them breathless
as love, too high to sustain forever.
He claims we will find a formula to explain
how the folding up of the universe
can be frozen like a wave
before it breaks. The suns of other galaxies,
he tells her, are gathering planet dust
to a critical mass and bursting, even as we speak,
like dropped marbles, like glass globes.
They hang like enormous ghosts in outer space.
He explains that an explosion requires walls.
Suns have no walls. Incredible density is needed,
three billion degrees, before they can crash in
on themselves (like waves.)
She asks him is that why we’re out,
in the middle of a field, gazing up
at the heavens? She squeezes his hand
very gently, ever so sadly.