Stellaphane

Imagine dim and distant objects
Flickering in the sky, uncountable miles
Billion and billions of light years old

Globular star clusters,
Flickering chandeliers
So close in the eyepiece

Yet stars remain beyond reach,
Beyond the limits of the atmosphere,
Firmament immemorial.

Charged particles in Saturn’s rings,
Leaping off the surface like scraps
of tissue paper levitating to a comb.

Stars linked with exoplanets,
Companions in the night sky,
Networks of constellations

Virgo rising from under the world’s horizon,
Cygnus, sailing swan of the night sky,
Draco of such celestial scale,

These conscripts to human invention
Will appear different to beings
From any planet orbiting any star.

In all of these constellations,
Any meaning is bound to Earth,
The significance perspective from a window.

Moments and clusters back in time.
What Draper must’ve seen as he photographed
The first human face and the moon.

Andromeda’s tilt offers an angle on the birth
Of humans as light from the back predates us,
From the front follows us into the night.

Kepler called the sun the fireplace of he world,
Yet averted vision reveals spokes of galaxies
Passing back and forth into eternities.