ISAAC DREAMING

My old

Old father

Strolls a cautious path 

 

Through the familiar public park

With his slow 

Slanted movement 

As he circles flowering beds

Grateful for

The fidelity of spring

Like a disciple of beauty

In rapt attention

Sinking beneath the weight

Of city noise

Uncovering

Surprising truths

At rest in the eye of fear

Rough trunks of his companion trees

 

Steady his shaky hands

Spears of light find his heart 

And pierce its heroic stance

With profound silence

Uncensored beauty

Beneath the weight of noise

Ultraluminous Galaxy Merger

 

• I am just going to stand here 
• as the lightshow spins away. 
• But if it were petroleum  
• in a puddle and I were 
• still young by the sun’s count, 
• I would put my finger in 
• to see what I could be midwife to  
• for the wonder of it, and,  
• looking up, to share.

15,000: as a galactic cloud so deep

I know there's more than 15,000

stars in the night sky, but I always thought there was

lots of space between them, I imagined them

langorous and whimsical in their

gyres and frolic

in the deep deep

spacious

tides of blackness.

I know there's more than 15,000

people at this conference, and I never knew

how jostling it must be for those stars.

How they might push and hustle to get a spot

in the great halls of velvet darkness.

Do constellations ever wonder

if they matter or if they're just specks?

Or can I learn from them, how to keep

my bright fire bright, how to find my place in the echoing

hallways of deep space

through relating to other bright candles?

I promised to myself to introduce myself

as "a galactic cloud so deep"*

if anyone asked who I was.

I know there's more than 15,000

but none of them asked.

So I'm writing this poem

to constellate myself within the great and spacious

tides of time, to sing out my brightness

as "a galactic cloud so deep"

* Adrienne Rich, from "Planetarium"

Image credit: The Photopic Sky Survey, the largest true-color all-sky survey – along with a constellation and star name overlay option – is available here. From http://www.universetoday.com/85577/photopic-sky-survey/

Celestial Bodies

Celestial bodies

if you give a galaxy to carry
give me the milky way
with Hathor and Osiris astride
so here and near I can almost see the laser beaming aliens

& give my aliens bodies
for I have finally
come to love this body of mine
so complex & rich in pains and pleasures
& able to sense sound
& smell & taste & sight &
      TOUCH!

feel me with your lasers
celestial bodies out there
peel my layers & pierce these starry eyed skies
with mirth & circumstance

send your constant arrow of light...

IMUNURI Prompt: Write of the Night Sky and How We Carry Constellation(s)

In Classical Chinese Medicine, the meridian lines are the maps of star constellations pulled onto the human body.

Adrienne Rich in "Planetarium" describes how she relates to the stars, how she is "a galactic cloud so deep...an instrument in the shape/ of a woman trying to translate pulsations / into images for the relief of the body / and the reconstruction of the mind." (further fab poem excerpt below)

Select a galaxy or constellation and write about it, either from the poetry of its name or image, how it resides inside you, or where you carry it within or express it.

Here are some images of galaxies to inspire (click "images" to see more)... clickable pictures of constellations... and here, for the science geek poetic sparks, what are galaxies? (from NASA)

keywords: constellation, poem, [poet's moniker]

Excerpt from "Planetarium" by Adrienne Rich

...Heartbeat of the pulsar

heart sweating through my body

The radio impulse

pouring in from Taurus

I am bombarded yet I stand

I have been standing all my life in the

direct path of a battery of signals

the most accurately transmitted most

untranslatable language in the universe

I am a galactic cloud so deep so invo-

luted that a light wave could take 15

years to travel through me And has

taken I am an instrument in the shape

of a woman trying to translate pulsations

into images for the relief of the body

and the reconstruction of the mind.

Adrienne Rich's poetry is reprinted in entirety here at the Poetry Foundation.