Love and Relativity

By Frank Kearns

In the dark of the planetarium
I think about the rings of Saturn
and realize that when we lay together
I fit against the curve of your back

the way the third and fourth rings fit
close but with a space in which
Einstein might have talked of love
as the transition of flesh into energy

or perhaps he meant the other way
because love for us is the oscillation
the transition from the fire of passion
to the feel of the earth when freshly tilled

between the melting of touch and sound
into a glowing orange heat
and the mundane placing of a picture
just above the living room couch

all of which is much more confusing
than Einstein’s simple formulation