My pen scribbles in interstellar space
with ink of lonely hydrogen and frozen microwaves.
Galaxies, more numerous than all the heartbeats
since the Trojan War, make up its barrel. So vast
that light from the big bang has yet to cross its length.

Neutron stars, dense as a sun squeezed into a city,
clip this pen to my pocket. Each second
the quasar in its cap explodes
with as many hydrogen bombs
as atoms in all my notebooks.

The point – a star-devouring black hole
its gravity twisting spacetime so tightly
that my awe cannot escape
onto the page.

Jon Wesick graduated from the University of Maryland with a PhD in experimental nuclear physics in 1983. His previous physics degrees were an MS from Maryland in 1979 and a BS from Indiana University in 1977. After completing his postdoctoral studies, he worked in communication, medical physics, and systems engineering. He now works for Amron Corporation in San Diego.

He has published almost 200 poems in small-press journals, such as Edgz, Iconoclast, The New Orphic Review, Pearl, Pudding, and Slipstream. Two of his chapbooks (My Father’s Ashes and Demosthenes in Kansas) were finalists in the San Diego Book Awards in 1999 and 2003. His poem “Bread and Circuses” won second place in the 2007 San Diego African American Writers and Artists contest.