TESS
(Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite)
She set aloft smooth on her slim white rocket
into the blue air above the sea,
the shape of fire around her like wings.
Her great voice diminished as she rose.
An angel made from bits of Earth,
sent out because we cannot bear,
in all the heavens, to be alone.
APRIL PROMPT #11
Janet’s #1: a fan letter to someone living
I’M YOUR BIGGEST FAN
They filled you with poison;
you made yourself wings.
They cut you open;
you took to the sky.
Is there anything you can’t fix?
Anything you haven’t lived?
Like no one else,
you keep your balance.
Watching the stars,
walking the mountain,
always knowing where you are.
APRIL PROMPTS #9
David #4: Your secret name, or real name, or secret identity
WHO AM I NOW
It has to do with the birds who come to the feeder
outside my study window every morning and the birds
who meet me in the forest and feed from my hand.
And the water that drips from the eaves
and the water that flows in the channel
under the log bridge between the low banks
on the east side of the garden. The old oak tree
and her squirrel- planted children.
All the different mosses on tree trunks and stones
with their lancelet or oval or hairlike leaves
and the small insects living between their branches.
Opossum tracks and bobcat tracks and fox tracks
and coyote tracks and crow tracks and turkey tracks
and the tracks of the stray cat around the garage.
The way clouds dissipate or grow. Planets
wandering along the ecliptic. The nebula
in Orion, and the star cluster in Hercules
and the stories about Orion and Hercules
and Persephone and Artemis and One-Eye
Two-Eyes and Three-Eyes and Briar Rose.
The stories about Elijah and Jesus. Stories
about my grandmother, my father, neighbors.
The people I overhear in berry patches
and on the street. My husband and son.
My friends. And you, too. Definitely you.
FIGURE AND GROUND
She is a shadow on the grass. She
is a shadow cast by a star so plain
it bears a simple name. She is a figure
on a ground so vast that even she
can not see herself. Mosses grow under
the grasses. Stars behind the sun. Shadows
follow on, between the eastern mountains
and the field all green and yellow. And each
pebble burns its shadow, and each broken
sparrow on the road’s cold shoulder. And why
would anyone be afraid to die
against this curve of space, this ground of time?
Her breath streams a shadow through still airs.
Passing planets pull dark shadows from their stars.
I shall discard their major preservation,
All that they know so long as no one asks.
~W.H. Auden, For the Time Being
Men left a golf ball on the moon–
litter on her pocked and dusty face.
Betelgeuse could hold a billion Earths
and still have room. The poet David
considered the Heavens and stood
amazed at the dome of stars,
home of angels and gods,
amazed that humans matter.
Dark matter weighs
more than what we know.
Dark energy holds
the whole thing in.
What’s so odd about
a multitude of gods?
O, Pluto and Persephone!
Chernobog, Grandmother of Beetles!
Under the Earth the shades of the dead,
root, and worm, fire and stone.
Here on the skin, trees and wind.
Up in the Heavens, a billion billion stars.
Jupiter, Venus, way up there–
Thor and Nanook, hear my prayer.
What does it mean to love?
Out here in the dark does it matter? Hell,
give me chocolate cake and cheap gasoline.
I want a telescope of my own.
I want someone to remember my childhood name.
I want a raven to come when I call.
I want a grandchild before I die.
O, Spider Woman, Shiva, Grandpa Oak Tree,
Brigid, Loki, Ab Kin Zoc,
What do you want from me?
I’ll offer sacrifice:
burn my mother’s letters,
give away all coats but one.
I’ll bury my journals and earrings
and smash the teacups on the walk.
Already I feed wild birds
and remember the birthdays of my friends.
I’m thinking of reading to the blind.
Will that make a difference?
Green Tara? Mother of Trolls?
Odin? Pan? Epimetheus?
Jesus, lover of our souls?
I can’t count to one billion.
An acre of cattails makes a trillion seeds.
I can’t define humankind.
A gorilla is learning to play the flute.
Vesta, Durga, Horus, Kuan Ti,
Eostre, Manito, Mary, Loki,
Twinkle, twinkle, Brother Star,
can you tell me what we are?
Bowerbirds build beautiful houses;
Ichneumonid wasps change spider’s brains.
Rebirth? A piece of cake.
Gods. Elves. Spirits of the dead.
My body recomposed,
my neighbor as myself.
Betelgeuse is getting ready to go.
Four billion years and our Sun goes, too,
out to where the dead suns go–
with our houseplants and graves, letters, spoons and blogs.
Nothing but ashes and a million broken gods.
Everything matters.
I think I have to love you all.
As for the beginning,
you will be forever blind.
The first light will never reach you,
the speed too great,
and you too far away.
You will sooner comprehend
the minds of stones,
the music in the hearts of suns.
Do you even remember, do you
understand your dreams?
There was a white-robed,
hooded figure in your garden,
a dead rabbit who came to life
and hid beneath your bed,
a silver cup that held the deep-red
souls of all your friends.
My father’s last words
the night that you were born–
He did not speak
of the night I was conceived.
Before my sister died, she said
how good of them to come–
My great-aunt as she departed sang
universe revealed—
Nothing beyond the primal opacity,
that background of heavy light.
Ending beyond time–
every stellar furnace out,
each black hole dissipated, every
molecule of breath accounted.
Oh, universe.
Revealed.
One black calf came, curious, to the fence,
the rest grazed slowly through the field.
People drove by.
Nobody stopped.
The clouds
in the west parted just in time.
We fitted binoculars with heavy filters
and there she was.
Our size.
Turning with us
around that close yellow star.
Dark against that star.
For months she’d been yellow
against the darkening sky.
We won’t live
to see this again. And will anyone
ever see us like this–
one black spot, turning through the sky,
just above the clouds closing in.
Coyotes are gathering acorns
to plant in the forest. One day
there will be enough. Even now,
the ancient acorn-eating peoples
curled in their river-gravel mounds
are arising and tuning their drums.
Red squirrels are growing opposable
thumbs and tails like monkeys.
Soon they will be able
to open any door;
they will wield paintbrushes and spoons.
Soon they will be able to sing.
Bears awaken early, craving beef and beer.
Elephants are learning to dig tunnels.
Dark Matter is gathering,
incomprehensible, into a god of infinite
dimension. All the stars are opening
their pointed mouths.
Is this so strange?
Once there was a spirit
in every tree. Once
all the animals could speak.
And you, stubby primate,
secure in illusions of grace,
is there anything you really understand?
Your brain extends through the soles
of your feet and beyond
the thickness of your skull.
It mingles with the shards
scattering into cosmic curves.
It’s time to get serious:
Take for example, this universe–
moving faster, heaven knows why.
Evolution goes on, outside your blindfold.
And take consciousness, that old homunculus,
that ancient soul that no one’s ever found.
Orion is hunting woodcocks by the light of the moon.
He’s heading under for the summer;
soon he’ll rise at dawn, then at noon.
He’ll stalk only daytime prey, for awhile:
the hot sidewalk pigeons, sparrows,
dogs panting on steaming lawns.
The woodcock peents his pitiful twilight call,
nods his heavy head, whistles his wings,
chirps and spirals, falls like a shooting star.
Somewhere on the meadow edge his lady watches.
Once while he was dancing in the sky
I slogged through soggy mosquito ground
to see him bobbing in the last light, close enough to touch.
Tonight I sat with poets in a bookstore.
Together we chased our quarry around the rim,
tuned our hearts for all to hear.
One black-eyed boy took a fistful of poems from his wallet,
twittered his longing for a golden girl.
We old poets know our places in the quadrille,
but the floor slips away beneath our feet,
the orchestra shifts like seasons,
the music will never repeat.
Even in the silences between
there are voices in the street, under the lamps.
We can never know where the fire will descend;
when, precisely, the stars will come to ground.
This was a runner-up for the Grolier Poetry Prize (now the Ellen LaForge Prize) in 2001. It’s interesting to me how the word “twitter” has changed since then.
