Continuum

“One famous analogy to explain the expanding universe is imagining the universe like a loaf of raisin bread dough. As the bread rises and expands, the raisins move farther away from each other, but they are still stuck in the dough. In the case of the universe, there may be raisins out there that we can’t see any more because they have moved away so fast that their light has never reached Earth”

-Science Reference Section, Library of Congress

An immense, intercosmic theory

summed up to a loaf of bread. They chose raisins of all things—

sour, wrinkled fruits as vast star clusters.

A million ways to describe them,

two trillion galaxies to quantify, and a pastry is

the image I am left with.

So much is left unchecked— dark energy, let's call it

the yeast, moves the galaxy farther

and farther apart. An anti-gravitational force

accelerating the cosmos into territory out of reach

from our observations. The Big Bang

is the indicator of this energy, like most unknowns

in deep space, imprints on the ancient embers

revealing the change. 96% of the observable universe

and we cannot see it, left to speculate the effects

from lightyears away.

There is raisin bread, however, kneaded and twisted

on a marble countertop. It follows a recipe while space is left

with spacetime, the observable universe, infinitely expanding

into where? Here’s another curve ball— dark matter, misleading names

given to opposites. The oldest galaxies are spinning fast, too fast for the sum

of normal matter observed in orbit. Here lies the gluten,

holding the impossible together. A composition of subatomic particles

that have no reaction to light, a theory and a fact.

A pan of dough can rise

in a less-than infinite oven in front of me. The raisins

have room to expand, as all of creation should,

while space falls into even more space. Invisible forces

powerful enough to balance a galaxy, spread systems apart,

and evade the recognition of a job well done. They are contradictory—

massive and elusive. Raisin bread is all I can hold

to be certain.