After Relativity

After that, I thought about
other things as the generous world
celebrated what I had done
so many years before. My hour
of perfect clarity has not
returned, nor have I proved so far
that God is not a gambler. Still
the old desire stirs me,
I think about the universe,
companion of more than seventy years,
who once lifted for me alone
an inch, the hem of her modest skirt.

PETER WARSHAW describes himself as “a retired college librarian, living a quiet life in northern California.” He worked as a reference librarian at the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA); as an acquisitions librarian at the University of California, Santa Barbara; and as head of public services at Cabrillo College in Santa Cruz, California. He received his BA in English from UCLA and his master of library science degree from the University of California, Berkeley. His poems have been published in Sewanee Review, Commonweal, Jefferson Monthly, and Hesperides.