I suspect the world remembers everything

—time and bones and words flung together,
and me in it, suspecting.

If we can believe in photons
—entities that possess movement
but not mass, and if the spirit, too
is made of light—then who am I to say
I haven’t lived before—or you,
and thus this tenderness?
Who am I to doubt that grace
is elemental like fire—or that souls
have no need of us, finally?

– "The Physics of Angels" by Trish Crapo
(from Walk Through Paradise Backward,
Slate Roof Publishing, 2004)

Image: Johnathan Thurston. (Photographer unknown)