Looking through a Microscope at the Universe
Evidently, you have it backward.
The microscope is for the microscopic,
the telescope for those enraptured
by the awesome scope of the cosmic.
Clearly, you’ve made a mistake.
Yet in life’s surprising petri dish
lies a macrocosm of creation:
startling stuff that makes up bird and fish,
complex atoms which incite elation,
that look like stars in a great black lake.
Tag: stars
Recurrent
Upon the beach there lies a rainbow foam
white, at first, then with opalescent shine:
a shimmering hue in the dazzling sun
whose bubbles in their iridescent domes
display, like love, attractive and subtle signs
for brief and beautiful whiles, then are done—
burst like a primer when touched by the gun.
Now the beach grows cold; the gloaming glows gold,
while new waves that roll reflect stars of old—
and, again, the foam’s hues shimmer and run.
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Christmas Love
Revelers swing round lamp posts;
snow flakes swirl through the air;
street lamps cast golden circles;
church bells sound in the square.
We spent the last penny in our pockets
on a drink we shared in the bar;
now night has cloaked us in darkness;
the city lights are glimmering stars.
Warehouses are shut and forbidding;
a train stops with a screech and a hiss.
We stand by the cold quick river;
I brush snow from your cheek and we kiss.
This old American town tonight
was never once so bright by day;
the cruel agonies that color our lives
have faded to a harmless grey.
In the churchyard the graves are cracked and crooked;
it’s where friends and family lay remembered;
all their smiles and laughs still treasured
on this snowy twenty-fourth December.
We’d keep the parlor lit by soft light;
while music played, shadows danced on the wall.
I knew the good times could never last forever;
I just never knew how quickly they could fall.
But night brings charming dreams anew,
and when dawn comes they’re with me still;
I’ll share them with you this Christmas Day;
we’ll let hope shepherd us, come whatever will.
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The Ancient River – A Villanelle
The Ancient River
From a ridge, looking to a valley below—
one hazeled and shadowed by the sunrise,
with willows bending in the wind’s soft blow—
is an old river with a hooked oxbow.
Over it, the sun scumbles the cold skies
with her honeyed rays and pale, warming glow—
snuffing the stars, shortening the shadows,
eliciting a wood thrush’s sweet cries,
and thawing grass in the frosty hollow.
Beyond the horizon the river goes.
While ever-winding and wild its way lies:
now eddying in banks of ice and snow;
now coursing across a taiga’s meadows;
now sharpening a granite cliff’s sheer rise;
now beating rapids with its ceaseless blows.
Gone now are night and its fine indigo.
The gold sun illuminates the vale’s skies,
lighting the ancient river as it flows
into a future that nobody knows.
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Stars are birthed in clouds.
Stellar nurseries:
Helium, hydrogen, heat; collapse.
Ka-boom. Nascent stars scatter.
Pop pop pop: little lights populate
Our skies. Ideas illumine
The human map, pinpricks of light
In shadowed minds: starlight,
Enlightenment, Orion,
Ontology, Modernism,
The Milky Way. Constellations,
Philosophies chart courses
Across galactic oceans
And dark, moral seas.
Imagination: the distant bear, Ursa;
The Chippewa folk bear—
Both connect to creation.
Humankind aligned to stars
Since times primordial,
From fairy tales to sailor’s sails,
And stars, like people, grow old.
They are born, shine awhile,
Give light, warmth, aid life,
Then die, and vanish
In the stream of Time.
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Eternal Love
Though even love between a man and wife
Can die, still love as a quality lives.
Love surpasses all close understanding.
It outlasts the rare, few sands that time gives,
For love revives anew every moment.
As often as it’s snuffed, it’s lit again.
It cannot be decisively put out.
Love is eternal and has always been.
It is passed through countless generations,
Between all diverse aspects of mankind,
Between folk and beast and tree and bright star—
In all ages and lands, there is love, we find.
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One of Those Nights
It was one of those nights
Where we were laying on our backs
Looking up towards the end of the universe
And talking nonsense about stars and life
When I had this unshakeable and illogical feeling
That I was falling in love.
I wondered if I should ask her to marry.
But for heaven’s sake, I barely knew the girl.
We didn’t get along that well.
Well, we didn’t not get along either, but, I mean to say,
What the hell was my heart doing
Trying to get me to marry this girl?
She wasn’t my type; she was too young,
Still figuring things out.
You’ve met the type: college dropout,
Wanderer, finding themselves on the road.
I used to be that way once myself,
But I outgrew it. Most of us do,
And the ones that don’t, well,
They are who were meant to be.
Anyway, the stars were shining and I was
Wondering why I’d even considered
Marrying this girl, as she prattled on—
Something about Kant, and then on to Archimedes,
And then into a bit of astrophysics that,
Even in my state, one skewered through the brain
By Cupid’s arrow, I knew she did not understand—
When I came to realize why I thought of falling in love:
Here she was, beneath the blanket next to me,
Baring her soul to me: a virtual stranger.
There was something admirable about that.
Something profoundly lovable.
I could have asked her to marry me,
And it wouldn’t have been half as mad
As the mysteries of the universe.
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The Autumn Prairie Night
Stars shine in the prairie night sky.
The night is clear. There are no clouds.
The cratered moon is full and bright.
Bison huddle in warming crowds.
It is late autumn. Crickets sing.
The northern air smells of winter.
Light wraps the pearl moon in a ring.
Through tall grass, wild horses canter.
Old trees creak in the sighing wind
And drop striped acorns to the ground.
The shallow creek runs through a bend.
A great horned owl soars without sound.
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Lovers Under the Bright Stars
We lay out under the bright stars:
Saw the moon lay in her crescent,
Saw the prairie stretch out to Mars.
We felt nostalgic and prescient.
Her heart was as pure as clear ice.
My heart was hungry as a wolf.
Words came at far too dear a price.
Love lay between us like a gulf.
If she leaves here in the morning
All that’s left will be memory
Like an orange fire that’s burning
That leaves an ash that’s hot and grey.
The horses they start to snuffle.
The dog is whining to go home.
If love can come through this shuffle
It’ll last till memory is gone.
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A Celebration of Women
You are the scarlet cardinal
Against evergreens and white snow
And the last gold leaf, autumnal,
Hanging from the branch of an oak.
You are the spring’s first daffodil
And the bluest sky of summer.
You are that unexpected thrill,
That astonishment, that wonder.
You are the dancing aurora.
You are the wings of butterflies.
You are the delicate flora
And as awesome as starswept skies.
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Silence flies on an owl’s wings
In the space between the breezes.
It follows the time when the skylark sings,
And waits as quietly as water freezes.
Silence sits and stares;
It makes fools seem wise.
Its pacific calm soothes anxious cares,
And it serves as Conscience’s eyes.
Silence waits in outer space
Amongst the beds of birthing stars.
It grants space terror, majesty, and grace,
And befits its stately powers.
Silence separates the words we speak,
And gives respect to the dead.
It defines the meek,
And fills with sound the pages that we’ve read.
