By Sage Cohen

We all need a line against which
to measure our wildness.

The park is cut back along the path.
I align my spine with the heavy bench,

send my legs out around your waist
as the sun heats a halo through your long black hair.

Today I can understand how the scientists misjudged
the universe’s color for turquoise when really it is beige.

The sun must have been streaming through the trees
such that the calculation of space divided by matter

became more like music. And when the rhythm lifted
like a woman’s skirt in summer wind, someone sang,

as you do now, of the sky being cleared by a good hard rain.
Then the universe compressed like two bodies dancing,

perfected with the pressure of exchange, until
the planetary percussion became a salsa.

Leaning into the beat, those men reached further
than who they were. Surrendered fact to abstraction.

They got loose in their laboratories, pressed to the truth
of the blue of turquoise until it was the only answer.