MY SEASON
Not Easter, those new beginnings
with eggs and new hats,
nor Christmas and all its nostalgia,
but Epiphany. That star,
a long night walk,
the expecation of surprise.
MY SEASON
Not Easter, those new beginnings
with eggs and new hats,
nor Christmas and all its nostalgia,
but Epiphany. That star,
a long night walk,
the expecation of surprise.
A NOTE TO DAME JULIAN
This morning I saw what you saw.
Not a hazelnut, but a photograph
taken from Saturn—
a speck of yellow against the dark—
and not all that is made,
only our world with its little gray moon.
So many have left off believing
that we’re kept, and loved.
Strange, isn’t it,
when you know we can’t know
the whole Body of God—
just the sacrament,
this outward and outward sign.
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 Prompts #24
David’s #3: Explain how you got here
HOW WE GOT HERE
Some of us came from the Red Sea
and some from the steppes.
We lighted fires wherever we went.
I remember the Zagros Mountains,
the shores of the Black Sea,
the dark caves in the high hills.
Sometimes we walked by walls of ice,
sometimes we slept in trees.
We were hungry, and hunted.
We were frightened at night.
We were frightened of anything
we did not comprehend.
We made patterns on the ground.
We made pictures in the stars.
We made pictures on the stones.
We told stories to make us brave.
We sang to make us braver.
Our children are full of our songs.
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.
DEEP FIELD
Are there as many strands of gossamer
as galaxies–stars and spiders
sifting through the sky?
All the yellow leaves of autumn,
finch feathers, the finite grains of sand,
mitochondria in every living cell,
cells in every soul–if souls have cells–
how shall we learn the number of them all?
SUPER NOVA 2011fe in M101
Small quick birds,
the great Gravel Beasts,*
our wary little forebears
flickered and lumbered and scampered
the day you broke and dimmed and died.
*Chalicotherium– “gravel beasts”–knuckle walkers, related to horses.
JUPITER
Seducer, almost-star,
bringer of winter jollity,
how I envy your moons–
their dance, their colors,
the way they throw their tiny shadows
against your wild pale flank.
MARS & VENUS
He is silent.
With one orange eye he stares
across the ecliptic
at his sister
who is not a planet
but a hole in the firmament,
a clue to the brightness above the ceiling
with its thousand painted stars.
SATURN
The old man looms and turns,
taking his time,
our time,
all the time in the sky.
COLOR BLIND
Antares is the red heart of Scorpio.
We cannot see its color in the dark,
where even the War God’s bloody hue
is nothing more threatening than gold.
ORION
Giant,
Hunter,
Lover of the Moon,
did the ancients who named you
know that under your belt
the stars are born?
One day your red shoulder
will shine
with the sun.
HERSCHEL’S GARNET STAR
At a quarry, in my youth,
I prised you from matrix,
tossed you into the sky.
I thought you were lost,
but here you are, Mu Cephei,
Erakis, right ear
of the somber Aethiopian king.
LUNA, IN ECLIPSE
Rolling we come,
trailing our shade.
Bell of silence,
ball of stone,
pocked with stone,
pale and silent
pearl.
GROOMBRIDGE 1830
I was only fooling around
when I found you–
Groombridge did it
with a Transit Circle,
made especially for him.
Strange, how some stars
shine more beautifully than most,
how they call, compel.
DRACO
Damn it, gone again.
Your head, yes, tonight
sleeps above Hercules,
but your tail is lost in light.
Please
wake up and twitch.
You were always there
when I was a virgin
and the skies were always dark.
WHEN I HEARD THE LEARNED ASTRONOMER
~With no apology to Walt Whitman
When I heard the learned astronomer,
when the images from Hubble were set before me,
when I was shown the clustered birthing places of stars,
collisions of galaxies, death throes of red giants,
when I heard the astronomer rejoice in the enormity
of our ignorance–Dark Matter! Dark Energy!–
how soon accountable I felt awake and alive,
and later, I wandered home and stood with my telescope
in the mystical clear night air, feeling curious and small,
and looked and looked in perfect silence at the 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.