Speechless Like Michael Caine

If it’s true that the core of the Milky Way

smells like raspberries and tastes like rum,

as astronomer Arnaud Belloche says,

and if it’s true that every pomegranate

everywhere contains exactly 285 seeds

— or maybe 263 but anyway Kelsey says

they all have the same amount —

and if it’s really true that our earlobes

align perfectly with our nipples, as Katie says,

well then I’m stunned, mouth agape, like

Michael Caine on the set of Batman, struck dumb

upon first sight of Heath Ledger as The Joker.

What’s my first line? What’s my first line?

Michael Caine, playing Alfred, must have wondered,

fumbling for the line like a poet or like me

when I first saw you, across the room

at a party. I’d like to say I was cool

like Brando, in Streetcar, “We’ve had this date

from the beginning,” but that would be untrue.

I was tongue-tied, speechless like Michael Caine.

If it’s true that 100,000 Jews escaped Sweden

the night before the Nazis arrived because

citizens with boats rallied to ferry them away

— and why doubt it? The stars are evidence

that bright lights interrupt the sprawling darkness —

then maybe I can believe that astronomers,

if they squinted hard enough, could see

our love and smell it and taste it and chart it

on the stars, which also predict with some certainty

that you’ll never leave me and we’ll

never leave this miraculous life.