Yay, finally a new poem came this morning, thanks to a program I saw on NOVA last night.---a poem in quite a different mood from the one I posted yesterday. Hope you enjoy! _____________ The Stars are Moving
Last night, thanks to our newest space telescope Gaia, I saw endless stars moving on my television screen, whole galaxies inexorably drawn to one another by gravity.
Gaia is mapping the web of dark matter that holds it all, accurately measuring the distance between stars and the movements of galaxies throughout time, even back to their genesis.
I didn’t know that our neighbor Andromeda was hurtling toward us at two-hundred and fifty-thousand miles per second, bound to merge with the Milky Way in billions of years.
How lovely to drift with the stars for a while, to not drown in the torrent of horrific pandemic news, or be swept away in rip-tides of vicious politics, murderous attacks, natural calamities.
We don’t have our heads in the galactic clouds enough, don’t even know where we are, too caught up in the mono-drama-pity-party scripts we’ve been writing for years.
Too often we blame something or someone for the stumbles of our days, the sorrows of our nights. Why can’t we remember where we came from, and that we are here to love?
So I’m writing this sunrise poem to celebrate the daily spin of our flotsam planet, the local star that fuels it, and all of us born from stardust, afloat in dark matter, and bound together by light.
[c] 2021 Penny Harter
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