I never had a problem with the idea of alternate universes. If they exist, they don’t need our mathematics to verify them, and their possible existence would allow us to answer some questions that have troubled a lot of people for a lot of years.
When the idea of black holes came along, people got excited. Even a lay person like me, someone who knows nothing, could find beauty in the idea of continuity of another kind. It seemed obvious to me that if a point exists where our universe empties itself into a devouring consuming spot, there just might be, ought to be, the other side of the black hole, a white hole issuing creation into another universe. The lay person says, “It’s gotta go somewhere.”

I decided that poets and scientists work together trying to explain things. I wrote an entry from my Seminar Poems, published separately in The Dumb Ox, A Quarterly Art Journal, Fall 77/Spring 78, 6/7.

I sent a copy to Stephen Hawking. I thanked him for the inspiration and influence he had for me and for my students, fifth graders at Longfellow Elementary in Pasadena. I didn’t expect an answer. I got two letters, I’m sure from his secretary, thanking me and assuring me that Stephen Hawking found my poem interesting. He was going through a difficult time, transitioning to better machines which would facilitate easier communication. I was extremely touched to have any communication at all.

I miss him. He had the same sense of humor that I’m burdened with, and we could have been friends.

People say, shocked, ”You actually wrote to Stephen Hawking??” I’ve never been so impressed by exalted status that I held back from saying something I felt I could say. I do admit that more than once I should have restrained myself in various situations, but I have to live with myself. I take my brushes with greatness in stride.

The poem comes from a time when I was thinking about a lot of things at once.

   Regarding That Suspicious Song and Dance Team 
      Poet/Scientist 
   Who Give Us Black Holes in Our Sky 
 
Beware the Scientist who 
Takes apart roses and bends stars 
And drags his bastard children 
The Ologies who mimic and follow 
In his train the chariot of demonstrable success. 
The fruit of knowledge is in bitter hands. 
We fear that vampirism which drains 
Existence to a packed 
Black Hole a flux of theoretic fact. 
 
Beware the sybaritic Poet 
Vampire too who in his profligate extensiveness 
Sucks the dry stones dry. 
Collect his droppings in the cave 
But do not let him touch you with his ear or eye, 
He will leave you altered and disturbingly familiar. 
 
 Taken in conjunction they give rise 
 To a source of speculation in the skies. 
 Black holes there may be which we know 
 But by negation of effluence, no flow 
 Extrinsic to the spot, but like a vortex 
 Drawing all things, even thoughts, the cortex 
 Of the universe emptying inward. The spirit 
 Trapped, no one to hear it, 
 Emits, falling, flailing screams, 
 Crushed between collapsing stars and dreams. 
 
Yet, one likes to think, a black hole’s other end 
Is a white hole of creation, 
Issuing a photon proton plasmic soup 
Nourishing somewhere a hungry universe.