Bubbles

Breath-born, an iridescent
embryo shivers into life;
it shivers with inflation,
with the paradox of being formed.
(Universes spring from
smaller seeds than sperm).

The soapskin seals up,
birth wound healed
as fast as raindrops fall apart;
and one more life-blob
joins the spout
of spherelets gushing
from a plastic hoop.

A girl in jeans
and a greasy top
dips her ten-cent wand again.
She's got soap on her fingers,
soap on her tongue.
Soap slicks the dripping film,
pregnant with refraction.
She pouts her lips,
blows—
mother of so many!

Across the street
a coffee-sipper watches
bubbles flit and pop
and wonders if there's
more to death
than splats of soapy air;
wonders if all beauty's thin
as these shiny things,
these bubble-baubles
with see-through souls
and lipstick skin—
fuchsia, gold, electric blue.

Look closer,
my too-close friend.
Closer still.
Until one bubble
looms as large
as a planet parked
above your yard.
Watch the colours
weep and swirl,
the city twist inside them:
the tram-track bent
as Sinbad's sword;
the houses high on LSD;
that Dachshund car with
banana belly and tiny wheels;
a girl in jeans
and a greasy top
warping down the street.

The breeze picks up,
the bubble shivers
—it won't be born again.
The weightless city shakes and splits;
it shatters like the mirror
on a pebble-clouded pond.

Then—
Like a clouded heart
it clears on mud
and trees
and truth
and air.

A planet now,
our marbled orb—
biosphere of woods and sky.
It drifts serene,
sparks with sun,
beams through forest shade.

In its centre
—tiny, bright—
two boys with dirty boots
slouch against a tree.
Brothers. You can see it
in their interwoven eyes,
in the root-deep
dream they share.
They don't know
—how could they?—
that other people
dream alone.

The older boy
lifts his plastic wand again.
Are these new moons recurved
in the earth
that shares their air?
Can their maker see them twice?
Maybe.
But it's all so far away.
As distant as his future,
the girl he will marry,
the selves they will
form, expand, let go.