Susan H. Case
After Hearing the News (About the Universe)

             Above the world
             there was only blue, blue everywhere.
             ... Louise Glück

Last autumn, while I painted
my bedroom, astronomers announced
the universe was turquoise.  Later,
they issued a correction — beige.
Not a surround for intelligent
life, beige, which is why my walls
are now pale yellow, trimmed blue.

Ice, said Frost, would suffice
for that beige's destruction.  But winter's
been long and I'm not sure I like the idea
of more dark freeze.
That slow gravitational suck
that disappears stars.  My end
a lazy float in cold once-beige
soup, finally able to get enough sleep. 
Or if fire did our universe in?  A vigorous
swim in the hot eternal seems
hardly worth the price of admission. 

What I'd prefer to buzz
my consciousness:  not beige,
or its conclusion, but blue.  Desire,
without Frost's fire, that blue want-to
that unfolds far past dust clouds. 
To the last boundary.