Laura Page
Ross 128
Physics says: go to sleep. Of course you’re tired.
—Albert Goldbarth
The radio frequency seems tangled
in the quivering bark-stuff,
the ghost-orphan limbs of Virgo.
I listen to its pulsing eleven light years away.
Though researchers feel sure
it’s the red dwarf, Ross 128, from which these frequencies
murmur, the notes still seem suspect—
like the words of the only lullaby I know:
rock-a-bye baby
in the tree top.
It could be any companion star—
Gliese, Wolf, V* RT SEX, or k2-18.
It could be interference,
a high-orbit satellite, a ricocheted cadence,
poignant error sent up, then shot down from
the bassinet of space.
when the wind blows
the cradle will rock.
Considering likelihoods, the frequencies stop.
They haven’t really ceased—all that ghosts me now are the seconds
of audio filed, downloaded. I hit replay.
when the bough breaks
the cradle will fall
Why sing descent
to those most prone to it?
One theory is that we remember, retrospectively,
not knowing we remember, that only chaos can truly comfort—
and only if sung very beautifully.
down will come baby,
cradle
and all.
Laura Page is the author of Children, Apostates (dgp, 2016), Sylvia Plath in the Major Arcana (Anchor & Plume, forthcoming), and epithalamium (forthcoming), chosen by Darren C. Demaree as the winner of the Sundress Publications 2017 chapbook competition. Her poems have appeared or are forthcoming in Rust + Moth, Crab Creek Review, The Fanzine, Tinderbox Poetry Journal, Red Paint Hill, The Rumpus, Unbroken, Maudlin House, TINGE, and elsewhere. Page is a graduate of Southern Oregon University and editor of Virga Magazine.
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