in praise of the James Webb telescope
 
 
forty days.    counting till next ellipse
when my heart gets a chance to heal
its breathing breath.    thirst addressed.

by the last census of my blood I reckon
each and every day each and every night.

          every moment earned.
 
 
          a deep field point of view
 
 
not a poem.    but it is.

not an essay.    but it holds more
than a thousand books in the blink
of an eye.    stories surrounding us.

time for show & tell.

are we alone in these dimensions
of scribed height depth width?
an interval of time to boot.

only a blind man would ask.

go ahead.    look up that phrase.
mostly what’s discussed is how
become rare it is to have a night sky
uncluttered enough to actually see
our Milky Way overhead, or much
of anything else.    pocket change.
 
 
 
 
rather, what the good folks observing,
their new curved mirrors held in space
what’s meant – is that nowhere they look
is the sky empty of galaxies and stars.
          nowhere.

give that a minute to really soak,
to wet your thoughts.    understanding
like that is, is something new to us.

maybe there isn’t even really – zero.

no nothing at all?

remember how people might have
said how small how insignificant
they felt compared to the vastness
of open space?    remember?

have you ever felt the same?
 
 
I am this much tall.    see the marks
on the door jam here.    mother said.

now, for me, now one wondering
is given way to another wondering.
just in aligning the eighteen mirrors
of the new spectacles, they wanted
to look at really just one bright star.

something standing mostly alone.

they did.    they got all those eyes to
look, to see the same, but then noticed,
say, it isn’t alone.    with no effort at all,
look, with only one minutes gaze, there,
galaxies abound in the space behind.
 
 
thus the phrase with its new meaning
now.    to me it says, my good and beloved
creatures, do not fear, I will keep you
company to the end of everything.
 
 
          I feel embraced.