phanaerozoic

Stephen Hawkings passed early in the morning of March 14th, 2018, at the age of 76.

Here is my poem, “Cerebellum’s Fire,” from 2016. It won the overall poetry prize in the Kansas Voices competition that year. It is my small contribution to honoring Hawkings.

Cerebellum’s Fire:

The bold but dim-browed ancestor of ours
who first gathered up in glowing embers
lightning’s gift to man to light the hours—
the first true man none of us remembers.

The sight of Mongol ponies, wild and free,
sweeping, massed, across the wind-blown plains,
the dream of warriors following his lead,
that sparked Genghis Khan’s ambitious brain.

From the crucible of Isaac Newton’s mind,
revealed, from alchemy’s dim and gloomy gleams,
the way God’s planetary gears toil and grind,
bare and bold, and not the mystery it seemed.

From a body pinned in place by ALS,
in Hawking’s mind the bright universe expands—
this man who is all but motionless
sees how the world was born and how it ends.

~Roy Beckemeyer, 14 March, 2018