a glorious sunset

In his dream
he was riding a storm.
 
He and his machine
have been churning out numbers
for decades,
a blueprint of the origin story
he told himself.
Greenboards,
chalk powder on worn-out brogues,
cafeterias 
strewn with stained coffee mugs,
loud debates, hushed conversations,
or pregnant silences.
 
One September evening,
the lone physicist
walks away from the office building
into the sweltering outback –
to the edge of a cliff
where the sun was melting
into the ice of the night.
His needle-striped shirt
was drenched in sweat.
 
He
stargazed from his makeshift cabin,
marveled
at the singsong of the equations,
and the engrossing symphony
of the variables
for too long.
His swollen eyes
stared at the sliver                          
to find the missing piece
of a jigsaw puzzle.
This month, he
achieved a celebratory breakthrough.
As he put the elements together,
something was off–
off
by a ‘designed’ margin.
Something was too perfect–
so perfect
that it defied reality.
 
He worked on it
for more than two weeks
searching for errors
but couldn’t find one.
The missing piece
could be an atom,
the immense pull of existence,
the endless forms of matter,
or infinity.
Every alternative
seems to fit
too perfectly.
 
He stood
restlessly
at the fringe of the universe
losing track
of time, sleep, and sanity. 
 
A heron
perched on a giant cactus
pecks into a lizard.
The breeze
and the afterglow
sweep against the nape of his neck.
He takes a leap
and waits.