Mike Stone's poem circles around a longing for closeness that never quite arrives. The speaker seems to address a lover, or perhaps Cassandra herself, the figure from Greek myth who sees the future and is not believed. Early on, the senses blur: eyes sit in fingertips, and breath is shared. Yet by the third section the speaker admits, "Nor can I touch you." Touch is replaced by "empathy of imagination."
Against this intimacy, the poem sets enormous scales: galaxies, eternity, the beginning of a universe. These vast things are strangely powerless. They cannot crush a snowflake, and they cannot speak. Only silence listens. The closing image of dawn creeping "spiderlike" over genetic formulae feels cold and a little menacing, and the last line, "Omens, Cassandra," leaves a warning hanging.
The mood is hushed, lonely and uneasy. It feels like a long night of watching, with something fragile held up against something immense.