Ahrend Torrey - Red Giant

The six lines of Ahrend Torrey’s “Red Giant” are epic in scope, weaving together the story of the destruction of our world with threads of hope. “Red Giant” is a poem which plays with scale in its themes, both looking out at the epic enormity of cosmic destruction during the future expansion of our solar system’s sun, while also looking at that destruction on a tiny quantum scale as the particles of everything which has ever existed on our planet is finally blended together in ultimate unity. Our vast death is presented as a final coming together, a hope for eventual unity in an extremely divisive world.

Red Giant

Do— you— see— the— Sun?—— Look— up!— Do— you— see— the— Sun?—— There’s— hope!

It will swallow our ash; in billions of years it’ll send its fire down, red as a wasp—and that

will be the day we’ll merge, we will fully merge into the Oneness, physically, like the soil

is already the Oneness of what has come before. Into the soil, and the vapor, and whatever

is left on Earth, the Sun will swell—Oh dying star unite us!—pulling all of our atoms

—into itself.