The Ball Machine Poem by Salvatore Ala

Cranbrook Science Museum

Sun moon and earth in its orbit of pain.
Vast togetherness of alien clusters-
But for the laws of motion, love.
But for love, the laws of motion.

Listen, ancestors speak through us,
Counterbalance to perpetual motion.
Words rasp against breath
Like being's transparent barrier.

Sunrise to sunrise the ball machine,
Eternally recurring consecration
To perpetual space and inertia,
Building its demolition museum.

Human energy engenders, smashes,
Exists in the antimatter of traffic.
Funeral processions proceed
Through interminable pageants.

If we understood perpetual motion,
We'd hate with less hate, less war-
Dream with more dreams, fulfilled-
The ball machine in perpetual motion.