The Relativity Effect: for Nickey Lewis

In our 20's Nickey and I both wrote poetry, but drugs, divorces, and too much booze took Nickey on a blazing trip to terrifying corners of the universe. I saw him decades later. He was assistant manager of a Gulf Coast seafood restaurant and was no longer writing anything at all. I have not seen him since.

Fly far enough
And fast enough,
Let's say,
Out among the whirling galaxies,
Through murky, gaseous nebulae,
And near -- but not too near --
The screaming maelstroms
Of the blackest holes;

And, let's say again,
That as you plummet heedlessly
Through space-time, you
Somehow miss collision
With some surprising comet
And that you avoid
All contact with
Red giants, white dwarfs,
And asteroids;

And let us further say that
Luckily,
Against all odds,
You come again
By some amazing curve
Into the orbit of the earth --

Remember this:

Re-entry is not easy, and
If you ever reach this ground again,
You will discover
That you are out of synch.
Time has passed differently for you,
For me;

And neither you nor I
Are quite the same
As on the day
That you first chose
To blast off

And explore the stars.

-- Warren F. O'Rourke, 1990 (revised in 2004)