My love for you is gravitationally balanced
but unstable. A system of huge swirling
whirlpools endlessly recycled

as repulsive forces that expand with constant
acceleration, like starlight created from radiation

My love for you is finite and ambiguous
Unbounded and forever, decreasing with time,
as the universe evolves, it weakens. Simplest

of all known universes, my heart for you pounds
with the pulse of a primeval atom

Endless and beginningless. Perpetual and relentless
Aspherical cloud of particles. Elaborate and unconvincing.
The outer chaos can not be trapped with a solid dome of reason

and necessity, the same hidden face, always turned on its axis
revolving about a stationary Earth.

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George Payne is a social worker and domestic violence counselor in Rochester, NY. He Has degrees in philosophy and American history from St. John Fisher College and Colgate Rochester Crozer Divinity School.