The Promise of Elsewhere by Louise G Cole
When you are arranging my funeral,
gutted at the finality supposing death,
stunned at the shock of our parting,
try to find a physicist to explain how
I’m not really gone, that I am still here
and there, elsewhere and somewhere,
not in the way of blind faith in heaven
or hell, not even languishing in purgatory
but still here in this one universe where
everything is energy, and all the photons,
particles, atoms, neutrons, neurons making
me, only me, still exist, by the laws of science,
cannot be destroyed, as all there ever was,
is now, will be for ever more, measured
across the continuum of time and space
by scientists, explained by physics, the
soft touch of my skin, the blue of my eyes,
the thumping heartbeat, that special smile
I always kept for you alone, this property
of the cosmos keeps going, every vibration
that was me is still here, now it continues,
my one being pulsing through a universe
so profound, where no energy is created,
none wasted or destroyed, the vibrations
gathered as a zillion finite particles into
this me, by the law of thermodynamics
destined to never end, just to become
changed, rearranged into another order.
Ask the physicist to explain. And believe