Give or take, the
universe is only about 13.8 billion years old . . .
And
while the sun is playing with fire and nuclear fusion, every
second (and I know this is hard to believe) 660 million tons
of hydrogen is changed into 656 million tons of helium such
that the difference of 4 million tons of mass (660 –
656) is hurled into space as heat and light, and for us this
bath is life.
Caught up in a net of stars and the otherwise intergalactic
darkness,
we should be overwhelmed and speechless . . . .and yet, here
we are spoiling for insight and daring to share what we know.
Through
the Large Hadron Collider
we are practiced voyeurs of subatomic intimacy.
Not that this matters much,
but it does seem we have learned
that in our celestial crib
there are ten-million-year-old cosmic rays,
timeless teenagers, as it were,
that are streaking through our galaxy,
mindlessly swatting electrons off atoms
and turning them into ions,
positive/negative,
and, like us, racing on, living the life,
making changes, building a future . . .
It
seems that while all of us are racing through
this invisible glue of “dark matter”
that is desperately holding the galaxies together,
there is that relentless cosmic companion - “dark energy”
-
working to pull the universe apart.
And
yet, despite the blind indifference of dark matter,
or the threatening suction of some black hole
lurking at the center of our galaxy, the Milky Way,
there is no doubt that here on earth we do matter,
and we insist on singing of each spring’s green
welcoming the joy in Homer’s “rosy-fingered”
dawn
and believing that the mating sounds of songbirds will prevail.
And, of course, we, too, can always take a quick tour of the
cosmos….
A
tour of the cosmos
Spying
this emerald dragonfly at the water’s edge,
I marvel at knowing its atoms were forged
in a million-degree heart of some distant star.
And
no less striking are those sudden
yellow trout-lilies surfacing
from the sea of spring’s dark earth.
At midday,
standing still in the meadow here
with the air scattering warm sunlight
into some blanket of blue obscuring the stars,
it is hard to believe this earth
is sailing the cold vacuum of space
wearing its conical shadow like a pointed hat.
And
quietly turning with the earth
into that cone of night,
I find the universe is unveiled
and the reflections of stars in the pond
are light-years deep.
also
by R.J. Andres
AI
And Why We Will Prevail
Is
It More Than Just a Thought
Archaeopteris
and Us
Portrait
of Black Hole
Poetry
Two
Poems
