Stephen Hawking

with the sun filling his eyes,
Stephen knew it would be impossible to talk
in a half-hearted way and so he perceptively
continued exploring the universe which was found
spinning on his left shoulder.
i understood it was his universe, and i kept looking at my own shoulders
by shifting my eyes left and right.
i discovered there was little to be learned by watching his face,
or listening to the inflections in his curiously new
artificial voice, but he was brilliant in the manner of Cousteau.
in his overwhelming presence, i often found myself
reaching for a well-read book which he added to
his collection in just the last moment and i learned that all last moments stretched
into eternity, bursting like exploding stars from any room he happened to be in.
when he talked about eternity, he was able to smile with his words dancing on
faint breaths of air, and as those moist nouns and verbs raced over the hard towers of
Stonehenge, i kept reaching out to motion with my hands, rearranging pebbles.
sometimes when i stretched, i found my own voice, although i never saw a Deity, even
though
i saw
Stephen sleeping in his chair, hair unkempt.