Poetry: Abandoned Mine, Issue 12

I love the origin story of the Abandoned Mine poetry journal -- the website states, "We started this journal for people who don’t yet know they like poetry."

I have the honor of having a poem in the twelfth issue, June 2025, entitled "Stargazing in a Closed Universe."

I wrote this poem in the late 1990s, after a starry night in the Rocky Mountains left an impression on me. So many stars, away from light pollution! I was watching the skies, thinking about an astronomy class I had recently taken -- the origins of the universe, theories of the universe, how light moves, and in my imagination the starlight was suddenly both expanding outward and zeroing in on me in my deck chair in the crisp night air.

"Closed universe" refers to a model of the universe in which the Big Bang expansion eventually stops, reverses, and leads to a "big crunch" contraction. (Note that this hypothesis is not currently in favor among astronomers.)