it is always night

It Is Always Night is at once a provocative poem, philosophical exercise, meditation on physics, confessional in haiku, spiritual inner voyage, and parable about loneliness. The sparseness of Japanese haiku lends the perfect form to the multiple meanings that the reader will retrieve from this innovative styling. The essence of haiku is capturing the core of an idea, and this poem, set in deep space, is an exploration of the essence of sadness. Physics is like poetry in that they both always seek the essential core of the universe. Physics holds great poetic beauty as it reduces the entire cosmos to the interplay of space, time, energy, and motion. The cycles of the universe from the undulating, desolate world of distant mass to the jumpy, chaotic world of subatomic vibrating strings and back is the voyage of the eye, the essence of the being that begins as a planet in It Is Always Night. In the beginning, she is a planet. Reduced to her essence, she, like the other celestial bodies-like all of us-is an eye that sees. We look at each other, distant and alone in the eternal darkness. She wants to reach out to another planet, but if she stops moving, she will fall. Eventually, she does fall and is transformed. But she does not escape her essence-or her sadness. As she travels her cyclical path through engulfing darkness and endless space, looking for meaning and seeking her solace, we witness the exquisite beauty of solitude, emptiness, darkness-and we are delighted by its completeness. Will she, too, discover the sublime dichotomy of loneliness?