Kimberly Johnson

Big Finish

Now that the last shaft of sunset has collapsedhttp://plumepoetry.brownrice.com/2013/06/big-finish/?preview=true

into that rubble of cloud, let’s dust off

and see how bright the stars are, the disclosed

vault spinning like a discoball been drilled

smack into Polaris. My oracle’s

a bullhorn for the endtimes, portending

wars and rumors of wars in the stars’ course

headlong through the heavens. And even though

the astrophysicists as in chorus

to the oracle declare that all this sparkle,

every spectacular atom of it,

is a death, the expired light of bodies

that have burned themselves down to nothing,

yet they are so bright, and shimmery,

and to shimmy seems their light to me,

sequins tilting into a spotlight.

Don’t they move like jubilation on their wheel?

And don’t they flash with brash abandon?

And if finally they should quit their spheres

and fall upon us, their apocalypse

will surely seem a shower not of wormwood

but confetti, gleeful streaking

down the sackcloth dark to pronounce our doom

a wop bop a loo-bop, a wop-bam-boom.

Author: Kimberly Johnson

Kimberly Johnson is the author of four poetry collections, including most recently Fatal (Persea
Books, 2022), written largely in response to the terminal diagnosis of her late spouse, the poet
Jay Hopler. Her translation of Virgil’s Georgics, which includes the earliest narration of the now-
familiar story of Orpheus and Eurydice, was published by Penguin Classics in 2009. Recipient
of fellowships and awards from the Guggenheim Foundation, the NEA, and the Utah Arts
Council, Johnson has recent work in the Academy of American Poets’ Poem-a-Day series and in
The Best American Poetry 2020.

Plume: Issue #24 June 2013